CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE OF DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA – A NEO-MARXIAN PERSPECTIVE

 Climate change affects everyone – the farmers in the villages, the wine tappers on the palm trees, the fishermen in the rivers, the fashion designers in the shops, the financial experts in the banking halls, the clubbers and club owners in the cities, the doctors in the hospitals, the lecturers and the researchers in ivory towers. Climate change impacts the accessibility of favourable weather patterns, like rainfall and sunlight, for farmers, consequently influencing the productivity of their farms. The number of kegs of wine that the wine tappers can sieve from the palm trees is determined by a good or bad climate. Dried or shallow rivers affect fish and fishermen’s catch. Climate change influences the accessibility of cotton and fabric resources for fashion designers. The affordability and availability of papers and stationeries to the researchers and lecturers in tertiary institutions are to a large extent determined by climate change. To the clubbers and club owners, the prices of wines are determined by climate change, the same as the price of pepper soups. It affects the prices of household goods in supermarkets and the availability of grains, yam tubers, cassava flakes, corn flours, and meat in the markets.

Climate change influences various aspects of society, spanning politics, economics, and social interactions. It impacts urban development, life spans in both rural and urban settings, and even the selection of wines available at wine stores. It affects the prices of foodstuffs in the markets, the prices of litres of fuel at gas stations, and clothes in boutiques. The quality of life available to us as individuals and groups is constantly being threatened by climate change (See the Economist Report, 2022). We are all in it, yet the case of climate change is a case of one man’s mess is another man’s suffocation with bad odour. The bourgeoisie is primarily the cause, the proletariats are greatly the sufferers. The depletion of the ozone layers resulting in climate change is an offshoot of the bourgeoisies’ greed and quest for materialism with little or no care for the environment.

Climate change arises from humanity's drive for wealth, the bourgeois drive for productivity and profit, unchecked expansionist tendencies, and strategies for power and materialism, all originating from the frameworks of capitalism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the appropriation of resources from the global south for the benefit of the global north.

“Man was born free and equal but everywhere he goes, he was in the chain,” asserted John Locke. At the outset, there existed neither wealth distinctions nor socio-economic disparities, no division between the affluent and the impoverished, no classification of nations into developed or developing, and no differentiation between first-world and third-world countries. In the beginning, the man was a man. What we have at best is the gender division. The disparities we have today are not the creation of nature, but man’s creation. Humans’ inherent self-centeredness and pursuit of private gains at the expense of public gains brought us to where we are today. In Adam Smith’s words: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their self-interest' (Jahan and Mahmud, 2015).

Unfortunately, men’s self-interest and greed are not equal. One man’s self-contentment and fulfilment are another man’s starting point. Same as groups, nations, and continents. Ancient men scattered on Earth moved from survival and self-preservation to social groupings and communal subjugation of their perceived hostile groups and communities. This was a period in history in which ‘every man was against every man’ such that life was ‘nasty, brutish, and short. ’’. Communal wars, intertribal wars, and later nations and continental wars became commonplace (Hobbes, 1651; Locke, 1947). The fights and wars back then were initially for territory (land – the primary factor of production) conquests. As communal, tribe, national, and continental wars increased, men began to take fellow men as ‘spoils of wars – prisoners of wars’ with the hope of using them for individual and communal services on farmlands leading to the second epoch of man’s pursuit of self-interests rooted in serfs, servitudes, and ‘slavocracy’.  Based on the fact that the slaves were given a small portion of what they produced for consumption purposes, excess production became a common experience. Within communities, some men appropriate more slaves to themselves, while others do not get them at all. This was made possible because men were built differently and may sometimes command more wisdom than one another based on the exertion of their mental capacity. This brought about surplus produce, called capital by the bourgeoisie, as exemplified by capitalism, which in itself is a product of feudalism (Karl Marx, 1867).

More capital means greater wealth for capitalists. While formal slavery subsided through the growth of civilization and was later officially called off by the global authority (the League of Nations and the United Nations Charter), man’s inhumanity to humanity continues through the exploitation of the proletariats by the bourgeoisie within village settings, communities, towns, cities, nations, and the global stage in the form of capitalism – entrepreneurship, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. This is what led to the incorporation of Africa – its nationalities and people–into the world economic order rooted in capitalism and its variants of colonialism and now neo-colonialism. This is because man’s quest to conquer the world and inherently others continues unabated until today. Good examples include the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine, with several lives lost and valuables destroyed.

As Claude Ake (1981:14) rightly stated:

The integration of Africa into the world capitalist system by Western colonialism and imperialism is the event which has had the most influence in shaping the economic and political development of contemporary Africa.

Our perspective aligns with that of certain academics both within and beyond the African continent that Africa’s backwardness is not entirely of its people making but of a deliberate usurpation and exploitation of its natural and human resources by the global north in the form of imperialism – colonialism and neo-colonialism. Climate change is directly linked to the increasing challenges swiftly spreading across the continent. This is caused by Western industrial emissions and the greenhouse effect. The continuous exploration of African mineral resources such as gold, diamond, and other precious metals for the benefit of Western countries is arguably responsible for most of the conflicts going on in Congo, Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. Armed struggles, terrorism, and communal clashes in most African nations like Nigeria, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have been linked to the countries from the global north.  However, this does not entirely exonerate Africans from being part and parcel of those who are making the Earth less livable, as some of the African bourgeoisie are partners in crime (Ake, 1981).

Arguably, climate change is a by-product of capitalism and some of the existential problems faced by Africa and Africans today can be attributed to climate change – from insecurity (arising from armed robbery to social unrest – communal clashes, farmers/herders clashes that have now metamorphosed into banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism); to excruciating poverty among the populace, and growing socio-political and economic inequality, and the problem of development as a whole.  While noting that some of these problems were not today’s problems or entirely caused by climate change, we are of the view that climate change is further compounding their existence and implications for development in Africa.

We, therefore, reject the notion that Africa is poor because Africa is poor, which in itself is a circular reason argument. It is equally absurd to presume that Africa is backwards because of defective institutions or inferior mentality and virtues. Just as the notion that Africa cannot develop without external funding and intervention like loans, grants, and aid which in most cases have further impoverished the countries in Africa. The assumption that without external funding and intervention, Africans cannot mitigate the adverse effects of climate change may in itself be a misnomer.

In contrast to industrialized nations, less developed countries face heightened vulnerability to climate change due to their limited ability to adapt and their heavy reliance on natural resources for sustenance. Roberts and Parks (2006) contend that developing nations experience a dual injustice: they bear the brunt of environmental damage and climate shifts, while also being pressured to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, which may hinder their economic progress (Huang and He, 2012). Climate change, therefore, no doubt poses an existential threat to Africa’s growth and development.

You can read the rest of the article here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10790784