Climate & Water in a Changing Africa: Uncertainty, Adaptation & the Social Construction of Fragile Environments

Discussions of climate change and water security in Africa are often simplistic and indeed deterministic. They overlook not only ecological complexities but also the multitude of ways in which various population groups across the continent approach climatological variability, thereby challenging positivist modeling and external adaptation agendas. The current state of affairs for many often-silenced citizens is already one of hunger, uncertainty, and marginalization; the self-appointed lead actors on climate adaptation–states, markets, NGOs–have, from their vantage point, deeply troubling track records of dealing with people and their environments. For plenty of communities around Africa, it might therefore not so much be only the worsening climate that is increasingly exposing people to disease, displacement, and water insecurity, but the very policies adopted in the name of preparing for, and living with, worsening weather. This essay explores how understanding climate adaptation as a fundamentally social and political process points to possibilities for imagining and working toward futures with greater emancipatory potential. There is no scenario in which African societies adapt successfully to climatic change and do not simultaneously radically reimagine both their relationship with the outside world and with each other, including institutions of control and mechanisms of exclusion at home.