{"id":16793,"date":"2022-05-11T15:05:51","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T13:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.kivuavenir.com\/?p=16793"},"modified":"2022-05-11T15:05:51","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T13:05:51","slug":"literature-from-the-congo-basin-offers-ways-to-address-the-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kivuavenir.com\/en\/literature-from-the-congo-basin-offers-ways-to-address-the-climate-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Literature from the Congo Basin offers ways to address the climate\u00a0crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Congo Basin\u2019s\u00a0rainforests in central Africa are sometimes called Earth\u2019s\u00a0second lungs\u00a0(after the Amazon) because of its ability to store carbon. In addition to the forest trees, the basin has\u00a0the world\u2019s largest tropical peatlands, discovered in 2017. Scientists estimate that these peatlands store carbon worth\u00a0about 20 years\u00a0of the fossil fuel emissions of the US. The Congo Basin is also rich in biodiversity and in minerals.<\/p>\n

As long as this strategically important and rich region is not destroyed, Africa can help\u00a0fight global climate change.<\/p>\n

The Congo Basin rainforests and people face\u00a0serious threats\u00a0from global climate change and other human factors. Commercial logging, mining, extensive agriculture, infrastructural development, rapid urbanisation, energy consumption and transnational wildlife poaching are among them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Overlooked role of humanities and social sciences<\/strong><\/p>\n

Academics and policy makers tend to see pure sciences as the only disciplines that can offer solutions for ecological challenges. They sometimes overlook the role of the social sciences and humanities, including arts and literature, in addressing climate change and environmental problems.<\/p>\n

But this is changing, through emerging interdisciplinary fields, such as\u00a0environmental humanities. It uses sources such as literary and artistic texts. The field also borrows methods from disciplines like communications, history, philosophy, political science, sociology and anthropology.<\/p>\n

My recent\u00a0doctoral thesis\u00a0(of which the original summary has been published in French with the option of a Google translation to English)<\/em>\u00a0argues that literary texts and critical studies of these texts have a role to play in saving the Congo Basin.<\/p>\n

Drawing on\u00a0postcolonial ecocriticism\u00a0and\u00a0environmental literary activism, I examined selected novels, plays and poems by writers from the Congo Basin.<\/p>\n

Their texts depict or condemn climate and environmental concerns such as deforestation, youth climate activism, wildlife poaching, freshwater pollution and unplanned urbanisation. They also question practices such as environmental injustice and violations of the rights of local and indigenous people. In short, literary texts represent climate and ecological problems in ways that make the problems more palpable and relatable.<\/p>\n

I suggest that literature can serve as a call to climate action. It can point out how individuals, communities and institutions contribute to, mitigate or adapt to climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. Literary texts are useful for environmental communication and have the capacity to deal with complexity.<\/p>\n

The research<\/strong><\/p>\n

The authors whose works\u00a0I studied\u00a0were:<\/p>\n