Speaker:
Mathew Bukhi Mabele is a lecturer and conservation social scientist at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. He teaches and researches on the governance (access, use and justice) of human-environment interactions in tropical ecosystems. He applies critical lens such as political ecology and decolonial thinking in his teaching and research to understand underlying systemic structures and processes that drive socio-ecological injustices and explore transformative pathways for just conservation in the ecosystems. He specifically studies knowledge systems, power and politics over framings of concepts such as biodiversity conservation, protected areas, deforestation, poaching, coexistence and sustainability at policy level and resulting consequences for everyday governance and socio-ecological justice in the ecosystems. His works appear in peer-reviewed international journals in the fields of geography, sustainability, development, energy, forestry, environment and conservation.
Abstract:
In this presentation, we make a case for continued interrogations of (de)coloniality in tropical forestry. We build on similar calls by political ecologists (e.g. Adeniyi Asiyanbi and Ariadne Yolanda Collins), and on those by African philosophers (e.g. Munamato Chemhuru) for increased attention to be paid to African environmental ethics. We borrow insights from (de)colonial political ecology and African environmental ethics, two strands of literature that support our critical reflection on ongoing efforts to address the climate crisis through forest protection in Tanzania. We then use Tanzania’s carbon forestry experiences to present three examples that demonstrate coloniality in terms of: carbon inequalities and climate injustices, carbon offsetting as a low hanging fruit and dangerous diversion, and the scientification and epistemic injustices in carbon forestry. Building on the Editor’s Introduction of the 2015 ‘Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology’ and Cederlöf and Loftus’ 2024 book ‘Discovering Political Ecology’, we advance the discussion by showing how attention to (de)coloniality within a political ecology of carbon forestry could amplify non-Anglophone ethics, such as Ubuntu and related African environmental ethics, in thinking about and acting on the climate crisis. We thus call political ecology’s closer attention to such alternative epistemes in the efforts to explore decolonial possibilities in tropical forestry.
