Making Peace with Nature

We live in a time of social-ecological crisis. Deep problems such as global warming, deforestation and the mass extinction of species pose immense dangers to all life on Earth. Outdated conceptual divisions need to be disrupted, such as the divisions between people and the environment, between cultural heritage and natural heritage, and between social justice and ecological justice.

‘Making Peace with Nature’ imagines and encourages changes in the way that we understand our relationship with the natural world. Extracts from novels and poems by South African writers are paired with South African and international  research in the humanities and the sciences. Together, these shine a light on the causes of the social-ecological crisis.

Many South African writers evoke the deep problems that we face. They reimagine the relationship between humanity and nature and engage in a struggle for freedom from systems that treat most of humanity and the entire natural world as nothing more than resources to be exploited. Their work enriches our understanding of the world.

Cartesian rationality refers to  a series of conceptual and practical divides … used by modern Western society to establish its own vision of the world; a standard to judge and subjugate others, both human and nonhuman. … Humans became distributed into social collectives (culture) that excluded nonhumans from civic life.

(Fiona Cameron, 2015, ‘Ecologizing Experimentations: A Method and Manifesto for Composing a Post-Humanist Museum’. Published in the book Climate Change and Museum Futures, edited by Fiona Cameron and Brett Neilson.)

There is no border where evolution ends and history begins, where genes stop and environment takes up, where culture rules and nature submits, or vice versa. Instead, there are turtles upon turtles of naturecultures all the way down.

(Donna Haraway, 2004, The Haraway Reader, page 2)

Current and projected rising sea level, as well as other extreme weather events such as the increased storm intensity, trigger massive waves and tides that result in storm surges, which overtop and encroach into the land surface area.

(Kaitano Dube, Godwell Nhamo and David Chikodzi, 2021, ‘Rising Sea Level and its Implications on Coastal Tourism Development in Cape Town, South Africa’. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, Volume 33.)

Historical capitalism [is] a world-ecology of power, capital and nature … The history of capitalist origins … is also the origins of ecological crisis.

(Jason W. Moore, 2017, ‘The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of our Ecological Crisis’. Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 44, Number 3, pages 594 to 630).

Narratives and local knowledge must be assimilated with technical data. Old neighbourhoods in Kano, Nigeria, have proved more resilient to floods and heat than have developments built after 1980. Flat mud roofs are better at absorbing and evaporating rainwater than are metal or concrete.

(Xuemei Bai, 2018, ‘Six Research Priorities for Cities and Climate Change’. Nature, Volume 555, pages 23 to 25)

Degraded farmlands have been abandoned worldwide, especially in high- and middle-income countries. These lands help combat climate change as they undergo natural recovery of vegetation and soil carbon and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

(Yi Yang et al., 2020, ‘Restoring Abandoned Farmland to Mitigate Climate Change on a Full Earth’. One Earth, Volume 3, Issue 2, pages 176 to 186)

The lawn, consistently and perfectly mown, was a great joy to my father but also a cause for concern. … On weekends my shirtless father would mow his lawn. With the help of apartheid, my father’s family, who at the time of the Great Depression had been bywoners (white Afrikaans tenant farmers, displaced from their own property, often associated with ‘poor whites’) … . Among a number of other banal domestic practices that allowed them to lay claim to a viable white location, the lawn – its propagation, design, maintenance, appreciation and use – provided a territory and a backdrop for their (mis)adventures in white heteropatriarchy.

(Jonathan Cane, 2019, Civilising Grass: The Art of the Lawn on the South African Highveld, page 2)

All creatures have been turned into property, the fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth. The creatures, too, must become free.

(Thomas Münzer, 1524)

The struggle of all humane forces ... in the coming century [will be] an ethical as well as a social revolution. [The] realisation of our sense of compassion in our dealings with animals is a necessary part of that revolution.

(Lawrence Wilde, 2000, 'The creatures, too, must become free: Marx and the Animal/Human Distinction'. Capital and Class, Volume 24, Issue 3, pages 37 to 53).

South Africa is a water-scarce country. Yet there are extant, affordable technologies that [could ensure] water security for future generations. … More than 60% of South Africa’s rivers are currently being overexploited and only one-third of the country’s main rivers are in good condition.

(Zachary Donnenfeld, Courtney Crookes and Steve Hedden, 2018, ‘A Delicate Balance: Water Scarcity in South Africa’. Southern Africa Report, 13, pages 1 to 24)

Solar energy [is] a major source of power… . Globally, there are around 1.4 billion people without access to grid electricity but who enjoy sunlight most days of the year. Harnessing solar power is fundamental to poverty alleviation [and] … provides people … the opportunity to light their homes and businesses in places where grid power [is] expensive or unreliable.

(Joseph Amankwah-Amoah, 2015, ‘Solar Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa’. Thunderbird International Business Review, Volume 57, Number 1, pages 15 to 31)

Bureaucratic hurdles [limit] action [and] frustrate effective drought response … . Response plans and key contact departments and strategies in South Africa … have become mired down in officialdom. Some suggest the blame lies with the State itself, and … ineffective responses are surprising given that drought is a familiar feature.

(Marie-Ange Baudoin, Coleen Vogel, Kirsty Nortje and Myra Naika, 2017,  ‘Living with Drought in South Africa: Lessons Learnt from the Recent El Niño Drought Period’. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Volume 23, pages 128-137)

Trees … become powerful social symbols when they are perceived as being part and representative of a social group (such as a neighbourhood) … . Trees help to create and maintain a … feeling of identification and belonging that is important to people’s well-being … . Very strong emotional ties can exist between people and elements of natural settings such as trees.

(William Elmendorf, 2008, ‘The Importance of Trees and Nature in Community’. Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, Volume 34, Number 3, pages 152 to 156)

The San … lived for many millennia throughout the whole of the subcontinent. Then, about 2000 years ago, they had to contend with an influx of other peoples. First, there were Khoekhoe herders in the western, central and coastal regions and, later, Bantu-speaking black farmers along the east coast and the highveld of the interior. Then a more comprehensive threat came in 1652, when the Dutch established a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope. … [The] San survived in the shrinking interstices of land between the more populous and resource-hungry agricultural economies.

(David Lewis-Williams and Sam Challis, 2011, Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art. Page 3)

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied … but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

(John Berger, artist, painter, poet, and Booker Prize-winning novelist)

All the trees here, and in every forest that is not too damaged, are connected to each other through underground fungal networks. Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.

(Richard Grant, 2018, ‘Do Trees Talk to Each Other?’. Smithsonian Magazine)

Mountains are arguably Earth's most striking features. They play a major role in determining global and regional climates, are the source of most rivers, act as cradles, barriers and bridges for species, and are crucial for the survival and sustainability of many human societies.

(Allison Perrigo, Carina Hoorn and Alexandre Antonelli, 2019, ‘Why Mountains Matter for Biodiversity’. Journal of Biogeography, Volume 47, Issue 2, pages 315 to 325)

Attitudes towards urbanisation in South Africa are particularly complicated and equivocal, reflecting the legacy of institutionalised racism, urban exclusion and rural deprivation. … Deep social inequalities and shortages of land and housing have hampered urban integration. Poor communities are forced to live far from jobs and amenities, often in hazardous environments with deficient infrastructure.

(Ivan Turok and Jacqueline Borel-Saladin, 2014, ‘Is Urbanisation in South Africa on a Sustainable Trajectory?’. Development Southern Africa, Volume 31, Number 5, pages 675 to 691)

South Africa discharges between 90 000 and 250 000 tonnes of rubbish into the ocean every year, according to a United Nations Environment Programme report. This is equivalent to five trucks dumping garbage in the sea every hour.

(Chris Gilili, ‘New Plan to Tackle Marine Pollution’. Mail and Guardian Online: Environment, 18 Jun 2021)