Join us as we welcome Moses Kansanga, a candidate for the Nelson Institute’s RISE-EARTH hiring initiative.
Kansanga is an assistant professor of geography and international affairs and a distinguished research chair at George Washington University. He is a critical human-environment geographer whose research focuses on questions at the intersection of environmental resource governance and sustainable food systems.
In his talk, Kansanga will discuss “Environmental Resource Governance and Contested Visions of Agricultural Sustainability in Africa.”
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Abstract
Africa is confronted with socioecological issues at the interface of environmental sustainability and food security. These concerns are habitually tackled using top-down capitalist approaches such as the ongoing New Green Revolution for Africa and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programs.
Deploying a critical decolonial lens and drawing on empirical case studies across Africa, I interrogate the repeated failure of these externally driven capitalist environmental conservation and agricultural development interventions in the region. In doing so, I demonstrate how top-down conservation and agricultural models are ill-suited to the African context and make the case for a paradigm shift towards community-driven conservation and alternative agricultural models that build on longstanding indigenous ecological knowledge systems.