Professor Green delivers ASSAf book award lecture

Professor Lesley Green delivered the 2023 Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) lecture, following her award-winning book: Rock, Water, Life: Ecology for a Decolonial South Africa. Green is the recipient of the Humanities Book Award, in the established researcher category. For ASSAf,  "[t]he lecture is part of a series focused on the Humanities Book Awards, offering award recipients a platform to discuss the motivation behind their books, the societal impact of their work, and the personal influences that shaped their text".

In her lecture, Green emphasised the need to have integrative science, with scholars and researchers seeking new pathways to answer society's most critical questions, as is the case with the effects of climate change and environmental harm whose effects extend to the animal, plants, and other forms of beings on Earth. The lecture saw more than 100 academics and interested parties tune in to hear Green articulate how to address these critical challenges facing society; arguing for the need to think beyond disciplinary boundaries and modes of engagement. 

Amongst others, Green argued that there is a serious need to advance black environmentalism, precisely because land, in the case of South Africa, has been one of the key sites of struggle; this remains a site with which black people become left out of planetary Earthly relations; that here too, lies knowledge that potentially expands how society thinks of notions of care and justice.