Human Rights and the Environment in Africa

Human Rights and the Environment in Africa
Author: Jean-Claude N. Ashukem
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000997677

The relationship between human rights and the environment, as evidenced by the recent UN Resolution on the human right to a healthy environment, is a topical, fascinating, uneasy, and increasingly urgent one. This timely collection explores the inextricable relationship between human rights and the environment as a critical lens for understanding and addressing key human rights and environmental issues confronting Africa. The work explores theoretical, philosophical, doctrinal, and empirical research to interrogate and provide clarity on how and whether the human rights-based approach to environmental protection and policy implications has been effective in enhancing environmental protection and sustainability in Africa. It brings together an elite group of African and international experts to investigate the increasing connectivity and problems with African human rights, environmental governance, and the quest for sustainability. The book is divided into thematic clusters, including: the right of vulnerable communities to sustainability; climate change, the right to development and natural resource governance; corporate environmental responsibility and sustainability; the philosophy of environmental ethics and theories of human rights approaches to environmental governance; procedural environmental rights; the role of the judiciary in environmental protection; and desertification. These themes provide a structure to investigate and clarify specific fundamental questions on Africa’s environmental governance paradigm. This innovative contribution provides an interdisciplinary approach to the philosophical interrelationship and use of human rights approaches to ensure and enhance environmental protection and sustainability. As such, the book will be of interest to African scholars, researchers and students in Human Rights Law, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Ecology and Conservation and Development Studies. It will also be a valuable resource for policymakers, governments, NGOs, practitioners, and all those interested in African environmental governance.

Human Security and Sustainable Development in East Africa

Human Security and Sustainable Development in East Africa
Author: Jeremiah O. Asaka
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2022-05-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000610101

This book investigates contemporary human security issues in East Africa, setting forth policy recommendations and a research agenda for future studies. Human security takes a people-centered rather than state-centered approach to security issues, focusing on whether people feel safe, free from fear, want, and indignity. This book investigates human security in East Africa, encompassing issues as diverse as migration, housing, climate change, displacement, food security, aflatoxins, land rights, and peace and conflict resolution. In particular, the book showcases innovative original research from African scholars based on the continent and abroad, and together the contributors provide policy recommendations and set forth a human security research agenda for East Africa, which encompasses Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. As well as being useful for policy makers and practitioners, this book will interest researchers across African Studies, Security Studies, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Global Governance, International Relations, and Human Geography. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Africa

Africa
Author: United Nations Environment Programme
Publisher: UNEP/Earthprint
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2008
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9789280728712

This stunning 400-page Atlas is a unique and powerful publication which brings to light stories of environmental change at more than 100 locations spread across every country in Africa. There are more than 300 satellite images, 300 ground photographs and 150 maps, along with informative graphs and charts that give a vivid visual portrayal of Africa and its changing environment that provide scientific evidence of the impact that natural and human activities have had on the continent's environment over the past several decades. The observations and measurements of environmental change help gauge the extent of progress made by African countries towards reaching the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. More importantly, this book contributes to the knowledge and understanding that are essential for adaptation and remediation, and should be of immense value to all those who want to know more about Africa and who care about the future of this continent.

A Bigger Picture

A Bigger Picture
Author: Vanessa Nakate
Publisher: Mariner Books
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0358654505

Leading climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate brings her fierce and fearless spirit to the biggest issue of our time. Nakate's mere presence has revealed rampant inequalities within the climate justice movement. While attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nakate's image was cropped out of a photo by the Associated Press. The photo featured the four other activists, who were all white. It highlighted the call Nakate has been making all along: for both environmental and social justice on behalf of those who have been omitted from the climate discussion and who are now demanding to be heard. Print run 40,000.

Synthetic Pesticide Use in Africa

Synthetic Pesticide Use in Africa
Author: Charles L. Wilson
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1000388018

A UN report presented to the UN Human Rights Council in 2017 recognized that, “although pesticide use has been correlated with a rise in food production, it has had catastrophic impacts" on human health and the environment. The report acknowledged that “increased food production has not succeeded in eliminating hunger worldwide because of the many interacting factors involved. Reliance on hazardous pesticides is a short-term solution that undermines the rights to adequate food and health for present and future generations." It is hoped that the knowledge available in Synthetic Pesticide Use in Africa: Impact on People, Animals, and the Environment will both enlighten the reader to present serious concerns on the use of synthetic pesticides, and motivate society to make the changes necessary for the sustainable production of safe, nutritious, and affordable food for the anticipated 9.6 billion inhabitants of this Earth in 2050. Key Features: • Explains the relationship of synthetic pesticides to escalating noncommunicable human and animal diseases in Africa and developing countries. • Discusses the impact of the herbicide glyphosate on the health of humans, animals, and the environment. • Reviews the disease causing mode of action of glyphosate and other synthetic pesticides on nutrient density and human and animal bodies. • Warns of the special vulnerability of children to synthetic pesticide toxicity. • Recommends needed legal initiatives to use synthetic pesticides more judiciously. The book is divided into seven (7) sections: I. General Impact, explains the general impact of synthetic pesticides on the African people, their animals, and environment. II. Human Health, covers the impact of synthetic pesticides on the human body, while III, Children’s Health, focuses on the special vulnerability of children to synthetic pesticides. IV. Animal Health describes the synthetic pesticide threats to animal production and sustainability. V. Environmental Health presents the threat of synthetic pesticides to soil microbiota and sustainable remediations. VI. Control Strategies discusses biologically-based alternatives to synthetic pesticides. Finally, VII. Reglatory Control presents some legal initiatives to combat the misuse of synthetic pesticides.

Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa

Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa
Author: James Ogude
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2022-08-17
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1000635686

This book brings together perspectives on resource exploitation to expose the continued environmental and socio-political concerns in post-colonial Africa. The continent is host to a myriad of environmental issues, largely resulting from its rich diversity of natural resources that have been historically subjected to exploitation. Colonial patterns of resource use and capital accumulation continue unabated, making environmental and related socio-political problems a dominant feature of African economies. The book pursues the manifestation of these problems through four themes: environmental justice, violent capitalocenes, indigenous knowledge, and climate change. The editors locate the book within the broad fields of political ecology and environmental geopolitics to highlight the intricate geographies of resource exploitation across Africa. It uniquely focuses on the socio-political and geopolitical dynamics associated with the exploitation of Africa’s natural resources and its people. The case studies from different parts of Africa tell a compelling story of resource exploitation, related issues of environmental degradation in a continent particularly vulnerable to climate change, and the continued plundering of its natural resources. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students from the interdisciplinary fields of the environmental humanities and environmental studies more broadly, as well as those studying political ecology, environmental policy, and natural resources with a specific focus on Africa.

The Challenge for Africa

The Challenge for Africa
Author: Wangari Maathai
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2009-04-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0307378098

In this groundbreaking work, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement offers a new perspective on the troubles facing Africa today. Too often these challenges are portrayed by the media in extreme terms connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation. Wangari Maathai, the author of Unbowed, sees things differently, and here she argues for a moral revolution among Africans themselves. Illuminating the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, Maathai offers “hardheaded hope” and “realistic options” for change and improvement. She deftly describes what Africans can and need to do for themselves, stressing all the while responsibility and accountability. Impassioned and empathetic, The Challenge for Africa is a book of immense importance.

Unbowed

Unbowed
Author: Wangari Maathai
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2008-11-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307492338

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • A remarkable memoir of courage, faith, and the power of persistence about one woman's extraodinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. “[Maathai’s] story provides uplifting proof of the power of perseverance—and of the power of principled, passionate people to change their countries and inspire the world.” —The Washington Post In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary life. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country.

East Africa’s Human Environment Interactions

East Africa’s Human Environment Interactions
Author: Rob Marchant
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2022-01-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030889874

This book is an ambitious integration of ecological, archaeological, anthropological land use sciences, drawing on human geography, demography and economics of development across the East Africa region. It focuses on understanding and unpicking the interactions that have taken place between the natural and unnatural history of the East African region and trace this interaction from the evolutionary foundations of our species (c. 200,000 years ago), through the outwards and inwards human migrations, often associated with the adoption of subsistence strategies, new technologies and the arrival of new crops. The book will explore the impact of technological developments such as transitions to tool making, metallurgy, and the arrival of crops also involved an international dimension and waves of human migrations in and out of East Africa. Time will be presented with a widening focus that will frame the contemporary with a particular focus on the Anthropocene (last 500 years) to the present day. Many of the current challenges have their foundations in precolonial and colonial history and as such there will be a focus on how these have evolved and the impact on environmental and human landscapes. Moving into the Anthropocene era, there was increasing exposure to the International drivers of change, such as those associated with Ivory and slave trade. These international trade routes were tied into the ensuing decimation of elephant populations through to the exploitation of natural mineral resources have been sought after through to the present day. The book will provide a balanced perspective on the region, the people, and how the natural and unnatural histories have combined to create a dynamic region. These historical perspectives will be galvanized to outline the future changes and the challenges they will bring around such issues as sustainable development, space for wildlife and people, and the position of East Africa within a globalized world and how this is potentially going to evolve over the coming decades.

Human Rights and the Environment under African Union Law

Human Rights and the Environment under African Union Law
Author: Michael Addaney
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2020-08-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3030465233

This book brings together original and novel perspectives on major developments in human rights law and the environment in Africa. Focusing on African Union law, the book explores the core concepts and principles, theory and practice, accountability mechanisms and key issues challenging human rights law in the era of global environmental change. It, thus, extend the frontier of understanding in this fundamental area by building on existing scholarship on African human rights law and the protection of the environment, divulging concerns on redressing environmental and human rights protection issues in the context of economic growth and sustainable development. It further offers unique insight into the development, domestication and implementation challenges relating to human rights law and environmental governance in Africa. This long overdue interdisciplinary exploration of human rights law and the environment from an African perspective will be an indispensable reference point for academics, policymakers, practitioners and advocates of international human rights and environmental law in particular and international law, environmental politics and philosophy, and African studies in general. It is clear that there is much to do, study and share on this timely subject in the African context.