There was a lot of doom and gloom in South Africa until very recently, with the #Imleaving campaign picking up steam again. Since the beginning of 2024, a lot of that talk has died down, thanks in great part to significant progress in installing renewable capacity. Today, the country has more green capacity than Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s total reliable baseload capacity. That is quite an achievement. But more must be done to ensure that the poor are not left behind.

Dams are massive structures built to control and harness water resources for purposes like irrigation, electricity generation and flood control. In Africa, much like in the rest of the world, they are not just functional infrastructure projects – they are often also seen as prestige symbols and markers of power, progress and modernity. However, due to their impact on the environment as well as climate change, we need to completely rethink how such expensive structuring projects are done.

The Niger Delta is a crucial area for Nigeria's economy. However, despite the abundance of natural resources, local communities often suffer from poverty and underdevelopment due to the unequal distribution of oil revenues. Furthermore, the extraction of oil and gas has resulted in significant environmental degradation and health crises among local communities, creating both opportunities and challenges (Ogbebor & Aghoghovwia, 2015).

The home of Togolese artist Koumy is proof that one can live content and in perfect harmony with nature in small spaces. Koumy’s home is a festival of colours, an ode to beauty and harmony in the middle of the dust and concrete that we are so accustomed to in many African cities. Importantly too, it offers us hints on how we should live in a post-growth society.

East Africa is currently in the grips of El Niño, a climate phenomenon characterised by the periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, leading to heavy rains during the months of October, November, and December. There is a risk of significant damage to infrastructure, which makes the requirement for climate resilient planning even more urgent.

In recent years, Cabo Delgado, a coastal province in northern Mozambique, has become synonymous with vast natural gas reserves and the promise of economic prosperity. At the same time, the extraction of these resources has been accompanied by violent conflict and environmental concerns.

The exploration for oil and gas in the Okavango Delta region, spearheaded by ReconAfrica, a Canadian company, is a project entwined with significant environmental and socio-cultural risks. An overview.

Climate change is going to mean different things to different people. However, one inescapable reality that we all have to deal with is the issue of heat. Heat is getting out of control! Are we prepared for longer and more frequent episodes of heat and drought? Does it show in how we build our houses, offices and neighbourhood infrastructure?

Just like many other cities around the world, Harare is struggling with congestion. The city has started exploring ways to give pedestrians freedom of the roads with angry motorists asked to stay away for an entire morning. The results are amazing. Children come alive and there is a lot of energy in the air with an exciting brew of graffiti artists, skateboarders, cyclists, and much more. Harare is buzzing.

The world generates 2.1 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with at least 33% of that not managed in an environmentally safe manner, according to the World Bank. This is projected to increase by 19% in Global North countries and by more than 40% in Global South countries by 2050 (Kaza et al. 2018). Despite many warnings that our destructive ways are unsustainable, humanity has still not learned to consume less. Agbobloshie in Accra, Ghana, is a monument to our addiction to "stuff'.

The Congo Basin, the second largest tropical rainforest in the world spanning about 1.4 million square miles over six countries, is one of the most important tropical forests in the world. It is becoming even more important to humanity due to the alarming rate of deforestation and tree dieback in the Amazon rainforest caused by illegal logging, mining, and land conversion for agriculture.

When we think about the Maasai, the images that typically appear in our minds are of tall, beautiful, dapper people wrapped in the very recognisable red-blue checkered Shuka fabric that Haute Couture brands love to rip off. However, there is a more sombre and somewhat tragic side to this community than meets the eye.

Makoko Island is an informal settlement situated just off the Third Mainland Bridge on Lagos Lagoon in Lagos State, Nigeria. It was established in the 19th century by migrants and fishermen who catch and sell fish in Lagos and beyond. Local authorities have always been unhappy with the presence of the settlement and more recently, efforts to evict the entire population of Makoko Island have accelerated.

Since the beginning of 2023, South Africa has been experiencing debilitating load shedding that has caused significant damage to the country’s economy, social cohesion and reputation as an attractive destination for investments, leisure tourism and conferencing. The power outages have forced a reckoning for South Africa’s baseload capacity and what needs to be done to improve energy availability going forward.

Although it is one the five poorest countries in the world, Madagascar is ranked among the world’s top tourism destinations due to its unique endemic fauna and lush flora. With its cosmopolitan growing population that has its origins in Africa, Asia and Europe, the island’s cultural riches often surprises visitors. Unfortunately, the lemur island has been facing a multitude of challenges on many fronts in recent years.

Globally, over 600 000 people still die of malaria every year, most of them children. The World Health Organisation Africa Region, with an estimated 234 million cases in 2021, accounted for about 95% of global cases in 2022. Climate change could make it worse. Rising heat levels are slowly causing the malaria belt to expand southwards into the SADC region. Are there eradication and elimination plans in place to counter this looking threat?

For a country of 14.9 million, Zimbabwe’s energy needs are much greater than installed capacity - 1700MW - can cover. In comparison, neighbouring South Africa produces over 60,000 MW of power for a population of 59 million people. Zimbabwe’s electricity penetration rate of 44% leaves nearly three-quarters of the country's population in the dark. Now, climate change is making this already difficult situation even worse.

To rethink the living through new imaginaries for and with the living, climate justice is essential. This requires a reimagination of humanity’s ontology vis-a-vis the natural world. To rethink the living through a socioecological transformation, we must transform our conceptualisation of humans in nature.

Magdalena Mwapinga farms fruits and vegetables. She had always looked forward to farming and began as soon as she completed her university degree. When she started farming at Mlandizi in the Pwani region (Indian coast) side of Tanzania, she never imagined that she would have to deal with the impacts of drought because the River Ruvu has always had a lot of water.

The effects of climate change are now more visible than ever, but nowhere more so than in Malawi where many know little to nothing about it. Questions are now being raised on why the country is being hit on so many fronts by drought, lower crop yields and cyclones, and what the authorities are doing for mitigation and adaptation.

Scientists, indigenous people and activists have long warned about the devastating consequences of the hyperconsumerist logic that mankind has adopted in a world of finite resources. Now, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2019) we are currently living the effects of a human-induced 1.1o increase in global temperatures with an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

Subron Ashok of Mauritius’ Centre for Alternative Research and Studies is feeling buoyant on the one-year anniversary of the MV Wakashio accident, a major oil spill in Mauritian waters that led to an unprecedented demonstration of popular ecology – a term coined after the clean-up campaign launched to deal with the oil spill. Since the spill, Ashok has seen hundreds of thousands of Mauritians rise up to demand better environmental protections, something that gives him hope for the future.

Ayanda Kota and his Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) have grown tired of fighting a raft of service delivery issues from the sidelines - water shortages, drought, sewerage problems, unemployment, waste disposal, etc and so, for the first time ever, the UPM is joining forces with other Makana residents and civil organisations in a coalition known as the Makana Citizen's Front (MCF) to contest the next municipal elections.

As people around the world recognised and celebrated World Environment Day 2021 we wondered why efforts to address the climate crisis are not yielding any major victories. We believe that the missing link in ongoing climate actions is the non-recognition that climate change is a social issue.

A deep democracy Agriculture Green New Deal (AGND) in South Africa is long overdue. It is time to prioritise the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the land question.

It is time for an Agriculture Green New Deal (AGND) in South Africa. It is time for a great transformation, one that factors the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the land question and not just market considerations.

Would you be okay with your government auctioning your country’s wildlife to save it from drought? And would you be okay with them doing so without consulting you?

The entire Southern African Development Community (SADC) is reeling from the effects of multi-year droughts and accelerated heating, exacerbated by the adverse effects of a particularly strong El Niño. An overview.

South Africa has been plagued by persistent drought conditions since 2010. Although international media coverage has largely focused on the “Day Zero” campaign in Cape Town, the country is currently being devastated by two water crises, one of them nature-induced and the other, manmade.