Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The climate emergency in AfricaThe world's political leaders gathered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from 30 November to 12 December 2023 for COP28the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference.The conferences have long been critiqued for their failure to introduce systemic change in the face of the climate crisis, but COP28 has plumbed new depths for the abundance of fossil fuels lobbyists and representatives of the global food and agricultural sector in attendance.The summit president Sultan Al Jaber, chair of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, stated that 'there is no science' (Igini 2023) behind demands for a phase-out of fossil fuels, highlighting the deep contradictions of the entire gathering and its failure to come to terms with the stark realities facing global society and the planet.The COP28 conference and the crisis that it is intended to address underscore the urgency of current conditions, the roots of the crisis and debates over solutions, highlighting the resistance of those struggling for climate justice.Above all, we recognise the urgency of condemning the disproportionate impact of the crisis on the African continent and of providing a forum for researchers and activists analysing its contours and historical roots.Despite the outpouring of narratives about the climate and environmental crises in Africa, there is still a gap in attempts to synthesise the dynamics as seen in and from the continent, to generalise and develop a wider understanding of the crisis globally, and to centre the analyses of those most engaged in this work (see Ajl, Ayeb, and Bush 2023).This Special Issue offers a range of interventions within critical and radical political economy analysis.It brings together researchers and activists who are committed to alternative visions of nature-society relations and analysis of the social movements active on the continent.Manifestations of the depths of the crisis in Africa are stark: from the disappearance of Lake Chad to the flooding in Durban and Derna, Libya, following a devastating dam collapse, and to drought conditions in East Africa and the cyclones of Mozambique.This issue explores why Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change, despite being a low contributor to the causes of it.How do we account for this development from a historical and political economy perspective?This journal has always stressed the character and impact of dependent development in the peripheryhow capitalist development in the centre is dominated by a political economy to satisfy mass consumer needs and the linked demand for production goods (Amin 1974).In contrast, peripheral economic systems, albeit unevenly, have been shaped historically to produce luxury goods and exports with the effect of limiting internal mass markets.The consequences of this unequal development have been, among other things, inequality, debt and environmental crises.These latter are not simply the externalities of capitalist production but are systematically entwined, and systemic to the US-driven imperialist system that structures it.As Ali Kadri (2023) has noted, 'capital abuses nature in the process of undermining the working class.'Capital produces waste and capitalists benefit from greater profits linked to war and cost-cutting exercises that are systemic to capitalism: '[w]aste expresses capital:
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4389950015