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TWN Info Service on Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge (Dec20/02)
Dear friends and colleagues Multiple Shocks in Africa: Ecological Crisis, Capitalist Nature & Decolonisation for Human and Ecological Liberation A series of discussions papers from the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), examine, from an African perspective, the multiple shocks striking the continent, and smallholder farmers and rural dwellers in particular. By exploring the deeper systemic forces driving ecological and economic exploitation of the continent and the experiences of shocks in the context of the climate and biodiversity crises, these papers deepen our understanding of the terrain of struggle for transformed food systems. The publications are available at: www.acbio.org.za With best wishes, Third
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THE ACB担 MULTIPLE SHOCKS IN AFRICA SERIES: The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent crises, as a result of lockdowns, have exposed the fractures of human societies・relationship with nature. In a world dominated by capitalist globalisation, these crises are not blips or anomalies that require a few tweaks to make the system a little more sustainable. No, it is a forceful reflection of processes that engender the economic, ecological and social crises that already existed. Key international forums and publications are focusing during this critical juncture on identifying drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change, and powerful forces are rallying to advance false solutions that ensure powerful economic actors maintain their profit-making while pretending to preserve nature. The ACB therefore undertook research aimed at more sharply exposing the deeper systemic forces shaping and continuously entrenching the planet痴 civilisational crises. Through this process we examined, from an African perspective, the multiple shocks striking the continent, and smallholder farmers and rural dwellers in particular. We believe it is important to clarify the political imperatives facing us as movements, civil society organisations and policy makers working on the continent, in pursuit of our project of human and ecological liberation. We will be presenting this research in a series of six discussion papers that hone in on specific shocks hitting areas of the continent. The ACB has historically worked to resist the advance of industrial food systems in Africa. By exploring the deeper systemic forces driving ecological and economic exploitation of our continent and the experiences of shocks in the context of the climate and biodiversity crises, these papers deepen our understanding of the terrain in which we struggle for transformed food systems. The series is our contribution to addressing the most serious existential crisis that Africa, and humanity, is facing. While the papers focus on Africa, we present them in solidarity with all those at the brunt of oppression and the ecological crisis, and to those who forge ahead, against the forces of destruction, and whose struggles are embedded in the politics of life. The first paper to be released, on Tuesday 1 December, tells the story of Ebola and multiple shocks in West and Central Africa. MULTIPLE
SHOCKS AND THE EBOLA AND COVID PANDEMICS IN WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA:
EXTRACTION, PROFITEERING AND SHATTERED FOOD SYSTEMS AND LIVELIHOODS Through the lens of the Ebola shocks that have battered West and Central Africa since 2013, and with a specific focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the tragic story of the Ebola outbreaks cannot be told apart from interconnections with wanton resource extraction and exploitation, ecological collapse, precarious livelihoods, financialisation and crippling indebtedness. We show how the relationship between ecological disturbance and human health has been shaped by distorted logics of austerity, profiteering and financialisation of human life and death, shaped largely by the pressures of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Collaboration between big Northern based conservation groups, industry and governments in this context are pushing a battery of dangerous and false solutions, embedded in destructive and exclusionary logics of commodification, dispossession and financialisation. NEO-COLONIAL ECONOMIES AND ECOLOGIES, SMALLHOLDER FARMERS AND MULTIPLE SHOCKS: THE CASE OF CYCLONES IDAI AND KENNETH IN MOZAMBIQUE AND ZIMBABWE Release date: 7 December 2020 The second discussion paper in the series critically examines the backdrop to cyclones Idai and Kenneth, namely the political and economic drivers of ecological degradation under the guise of development loans and aid, through rapacious natural resource extraction and social and cultural displacement. We focus on Mozambique, and to a lesser degree Zimbabwe, and examine the intersections between climate change, deforestation, agriculture and extractivism, and their roles in driving social and political instability and food insecurity in these countries. On the one hand, so-called development interventions reinforce indebtedness, inequalities and social exclusion. And on the other, they deepen dependency on destructive, short-sighted and short-lived carbon and capital-intensive projects, and on global agricultural and forest value chains, which all contribute to creating conditions for extreme vulnerability especially due to ecological imbalances, and to shocks such as the fall armyworm (FAW) infestation and the COVID-19 pandemic. SHOCK AFTER SHOCK IN AFRICA: A TALE OF ECOLOGICAL IMBALANCE, THE FALL ARMYWORM INFESTATION AND FALSE SOLUTIONS Release date: 11 December 2020 The FAW infestation on the continent took root principally because of ecological imbalances as discussed in our Shock after shock in Africa: a tale of ecological imbalance, the fall armyworm infestation and false solutions.FAW, which impacted millions of smallholder farmers across the continent, is a symptom of distorted farming and food systems ・pointing to underlying ecological imbalance, gross inequities and a myriad of false solutions that are misdirecting the fate of both the planet and its peoples. The FAW infestations compel us to transition to agroecology, which have dealt far better with pressures like FAW, and would certainly have prevented its emergence as a pest in the first place. However, agroecological transition is inseparable from broader transitions that must confront resource extractivism, undemocratic governments, economic injustice, and strengthen the foundations for social equality. LOCUST PLAGUES, SMALLHOLDERS AND MULTIPLE SHOCKS IN KENYA, ETHIOPIA AND UGANDA: TIME TO CONFRONT THE IMPERIAL AGENDA IN AFRICA Release date: 2021 In the fourth discussion paper of this series, we turn to another pest infestation that has been pounding East Africa since early 2020. The locusts hit a region and its smallholder farmers already battered by climate change ・increasing extreme weather events, including cyclones, droughts and floods, rising temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall. The region is also a hotbed of efforts to intensify the corporatisation and industrialisation of agriculture, and in response to each shock, East African governments together with powerful northern governments, foundations and financial institutions insist that greater commercialisation and integration into global value chains through use of chemical inputs and technology are the solution to the challenges faced by smallholder food producers. The paper dives into the deeper connections between debt, aid, digitalisation and financialisation, which are increasingly determining the terrain on which smallholder farmers must cope; rather than strengthening rights (to land, water, democracy, justice, and the rights of nature) as the foundation for ecologically viable societies. MULTIPLE SHOCKS, AGRIBUSINESS FEUDALISM AND THE MONOPOLISATION OF PEASANT TERRITORIES: A VIEW FROM ECUADOR ON AGROBIODIVERSITY AND THE PEASANT WEB OF LIFE Release date: 2021 Given our internationalist commitment, the fifth discussion paper in this series looks at how shocks are used to further industrialise maize production in Ecuador, through the provision of 吐arming kits・ which is undermining the ecological basis of peasant seed and farming systems. The paper is particularly resonant for the ACB, given our pioneering work of many years on the role of Farm Input Subsidy Programmes (FISPs) in various African countries, as a means to hook small farmers onto the industrial agricultural input treadmill and undermine their economic integrity and food sovereignty. The Ecuadorian government uses farming kits to shift peasants to monoculture maize production, while also using shock after shock, such as pest infestations, floods and earthquakes as grounds for their apparent necessity. The paper deepens our perspective on FISPs by showing how it is also about delivering and locking peasants and their produce into corporate marketing chains; whereas the ecological and social crisis calls for strengthening peasant seed systems as well as peasant- and community-controlled marketing systems. The final paper of the series will bring together the key lessons from all the papers into an overarching political and conceptual framing that suggests our political imperatives moving forward. The systemic crises call for strengthening our systemic perspectives as guides to our political action as food sovereignty and progressive movements and organisations on the continent. This paper intends to contribute to such strengthening. The papers show that the shocks hitting especially smallholders and rural dwellers in Africa, and the false solutions proposed, cannot be understood outside the operations of global imperialism and the continuation of economic and ecological colonialism and capitalist globalisation. The Empire痴 recovery plan for the planet amounts to nothing less than genocide and ecocide. We are heading towards an ecological and economic wasteland of a continent unless we stop them. The situations explored in the discussion papers are therefore bleak, but they must be known in order to politically situate an agenda driven by solidarity and, indeed, love ・for justice, and for all life on earth. They point to the urgent necessity of decolonisation agendas drawing on myriad organising and practices already in flow, to the construction of a progressive, movement-driven pan-African agenda appropriate to the task of genuine human and ecological liberation. This research series is our contribution to this political project of solidarity with nature and all peoples of the world who are caught in forces of destruction but who continually work for ecologically just and egalitarian futures. We invite you to continue this journey with us and the movement of organisations, networks and communities devoted to nurturing life: of all humanity, all non-human life, the earth, and all these forces of life that bind us.
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