Thinking like a tree: Critical Zones Africa for environmental justice in Africa

Fifty-seven years after East African leaders gathered in Arusha to carve a new path of self-reliance and African socialism for Tanzania and the continent, the Critical Zones Africa team gathered in the same city to re-imagine an African science for habitability. To build an African scholarship that accounts for the multiple relationships that make life habitable in the critical zone, the thin zone from bedrock to tree top where the flows of molecules, organisms, matter, and society make life possible. Across the continent this zone is under threat from water pollution, agro-chemical contamination, the cascading impacts of the climate crisis, multispecies extinctions, poor infrastructure planning, and the consequences of economic inequality and exploitive global financial systems. As our critical zones teeter on the edge of collapse it is clear that the continent is in need of a scholarship that takes seriously the lived experiences of people throughout the zone to build a political sustainable African environmental movement, something sustainability sciences based on the experiences of the Global North has failed to do.

A core theme of the gathering was the proposal to ‘think like a tree’. A tree is in the business of mediating flows between ground and air, soil and water, and foster mutual relationships with other species for their survival. Thinking about the flows of life on the vertical, like the flows of a tree, is a key shift from a sustainability science focused on horizontal flows often mediated by financial mechanisms. The gathering included professors, academics, policy specialists, and graduate students from all five sites of the research project: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Also joining the program were special guests Dr Mamphela Ramphele, UCT dean of humanities Professor Shose Kessi, and the Science for Africa Foundation DELTAS program director Dr Denis Chopera. A pan African gathering for the beginning of a scholarship based on the values of liberation, freedom, and collaboration. Of thinking like a tree.

It was hard not to feel the historic nature of the moment as Dr Ramphele urged us to recognise the revolutionary nature of the work ahead. The work to challenge hegemonic regimes of knowledge production, think across disciplinary divides, and include local community voices and knowledge – not as a tick box exercise for ‘ethical research’ but as a means for local and indigenous people to speak back to a politics and science that excludes their contribution and make life habitable on their own terms. While we can, and must, problematise the words ‘indigenous’, ‘science’ and ‘knowledge’, the sentiment remains. The Global North and Western Science does not hold a monopoly on understanding the world and it is our time to hear the voices of those on the ground. Those that know the landscape, the stars, the soils, the winds, the birds, the world.

Professor Kessi’s address on the decolonial turn in African Scholarship, particularly in South African universities, emphasised the need to rethink a science for and of Africa and to disrupt colonial power relations that have neglected the lived experience and knowledge of local people. Prof Kessi noted that the decolonial turn is just that: a turn. The decolonisation of our scholarship is not complete, nor does not have a set direction. Rather, it is our task to turn the liberatory corner and walk with our heads and our hearts towards the African university we want. Of epistemic justice and research as healing. Healing the relationships with each other, with soil, with Earth, with the critical zone.

The work of healing is not easy. The practicalities of transdisciplinary work emerged throughout the week as soil scientists, anthropologists, policy scholars, environmental scientists, geographical information system experts, hydro-social scientists, and engineers graciously stepped out of their comfortable disciplinary silo’s and attempted the work of talking and thinking together for habitability. As students and academics alike navigated such mental gymnastics it was clear by the end of week research proposal presentations from across the sites that the beginning of a transdisciplinary scholarship for healing was well underway. An important part of these proposals was not only the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods to tell the story of a changing critical zone but a sense of connection to the lived experiences of people in each respective site. Thinking like a tree requires us to tell a different story of changing landscapes and embrace the emotion that comes with the loss of soils, water, and uncertain climate futures. To head the call of Amié Cesairé that “colonisation = thingification” and tell a story beyond strictly measurable and quantifiable objects. It is time for a new story. A story of the Earth.

During the week, these stories emerged with one particularly challenging myself and many of my colleagues to reckon with the pain that comes with working in landscapes brutalised by the forces of greed and capital. As teams reported back on an exercise that challenged us to think like a tree in our respective landscapes - to reflect on our histories, our soils, our air, our multispecies entanglements - the Tanzanian team captivated the room with their description. They described a tree struggling with deforestation and soil losses. A tree challenged with the lack of nutrients. A tree traumatised by the death of their great grandmothers, sisters, and mothers. A tree in a state of abonnement. Emotions rose and applause was duly given, however this story changed something in the air. There was a sense that this is what we were gathered here to do. To tell the grounded stories of a landscape in disrepair. To connect each other back to Earth or as Dr Ramphele remarked: “To connect to that which is already inside of us”.

Flying over the Muizenberg East site as we descended back into Cape Town, I was hopeful of the new stories that we could tell of this confusing landscape. This landscape where waste dump meets nature reserve, meets sewage works, meets international birding site, meets endangered vegetation, meets sea level rise. While the task of integrating methods and mental gymnastics needed to tell such stories is only just beginning, I am reminded of the encouraging words of Dr Ramphele who challenged us not to shy away in the face of adversity but to be brave in our mission and to stand together as we carve a new path for a liberatory African Earth politics, for the “most successful trees are those that enable other trees”.  

Our future as Critical Zones Africa is bright. We are well rooted. We are connected. We are bold. We are revolutionary!