Conceptualising environmental justice through epistemic justice in Africa

Abstract

The exclusion of local and indigenous people’s knowledge from meaning-making is a form of epistemic injustice. As I consider how current frameworks for environmental justice in Africa are largely framed using non-African epistemic approaches, I claim that African epistemologies and ethics ought to be seriously taken as the lens through which to view and address some of the historical social injustices such as environmental inequality in Africa. I consider that due to slavery, colonialism and neo-colonial policies, most indigenous African populations are still dispossessed of land and natural resources, which were their major sources of livelihood. When they seek environmental justice through, for example, the quest for fair distributions, participation, recognition and land reform and redistribution, they are not usually taken seriously by those who claim epistemic hegemony because of preconceived prejudices characterising African people as incapable, irresponsible and unintelligible. They are thus subjected to discriminatory epistemic injustice, which manifests as either testimonial or hermeneutical, as I will use Miranda Fricker’s theory to unravel the connection between epistemic injustice and environmental injustice in Africa. I consider why African people who are subjected to environmental injustice ought to have an epistemic responsibility to shift from the racial- and colonial-inspired epistemic injustice paradigms. Essentially, I propose a different and oft-neglected African normative epistemic justice framework that is required for conceptualising environmental justice.