Situations Vacant – Arts for Climate
The reggae equivalent of the Julius Nyerere diss is perhaps Sizzla’s “Hungry Children.” The belligerent sing-jay challenges Babylon: “You are destroying Earth, yet you still want to go Mars.”
When the Apollo mission landed the first crew on the moon in 1969, founding Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere was not among the cheering spectators.
“While they were trying to reach the moon, we were trying to reach the village,” the statesman is reported to have said.
There have been different readings of Nyerere’s statement on the first league of moonwalkers, but one thing remains straightforward: all worthwhile progress is human-centered.
The reggae equivalent of the Nyerere diss is perhaps Sizzla’s “Hungry Children.” The belligerent sing-jay challenges Babylon: “You are destroying Earth, yet you still want to go Mars.”
Without taking anything away from the astronauts, as I am also overwhelmed by the phenomenal facility of space travel in flashing new light into the universe, I write to concur with Nyerere and Sizzla, at least in the creative scheme of things.
Science fiction, dystopian fantasy, horror and other remote prospect genres have been taken to scale, with celebrity authors grossing millions for their space excursions.
In Africa, aversion to stereotypes has lately occasioned the proliferation of high end, post-nationalist abstracts which sometimes brook no connection with everyday communities and their survival stories.
While every creative expression has its place in the universal canon of imagination, and sometimes the futuristic drift is just what we need to jolt us out of complacency, I believe a new movement of artists must come back to Earth and share village stories by which everyday people can survive and thrive.
There is need to bring back the village and the ghetto, to shape-shift the base of the pyramid, into the centre of every cultural imperative as no progress indicator is more important than human-centred development and life enhancement for the poor and vulnerable.
Art, particularly creative writing, is a necessary function to this end. I do not intend to throw a cumbersome prescription at anyone. This is, rather, a modest proposal for writers to balance what is in our interest with what interests us, not by playing down the latter but by encouraging the former.
Climate change, lately foregrounded on the global development arena, is not only making Earth less habitable, but has routed the planet into a new extinction phase.
“The Heart Goes Last” author Margaret Atwood makes a pertinent case in “The World in 2016” edition of “The Economist.”
“In the lead-up to 2016, the human race is facing its biggest ever test in its struggle to remain alive on planet Earth: how do we avoid choking from oxygen depletion and boiling to death through our own energy-producing technologies?” Atwood asks.
In her Minds on the Future instalment, Atwood says mankind is drowning in its poisonous chemicals and effluvium, while incognito carcinogens such as pesticides, fungicides and fertilisers are coursing into vulnerable populations.
She argues that with Earth in the early moments of a necessary changeover, and creative writers rummaging through the possibilities for redemption, it is important to create a realistic balance which neither extinguishes hope nor encourages complacency.
An unsettling 2015 “Science Advances” study says climate change, chiefly driven by pollution and deforestation, has erased more than 400 vertebrate species off the planet since 1900, and features the human race on the as a whole on the death row, provided the debilitating patterns are not significantly reversed.
“New African” reports that the Conference of Parties (COP21), hosted by Paris from November 30 to December 10, signalled the first time the climate change problem has taken global centre stage since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
“What has become evident is the swell of support for immediate and concrete solutions,” New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Planning and Coordinating Agency CEO at COP21 Dr. Ibrahim Hassane Malaki writes in “New African”.
“Consensus has been reached that climate change is a global challenge which puts at risk not only our environment but also world economic prosperity, development gains and, equally worryingly, political stability and human security,” he says.
Malaki points out that the destructive trail of climate change is nowhere more precipitate than in Africa, citing multiple stress factors such as the continent’s low adaptive capacity, high dependence on rain-fed agriculture, conflicts, disease prevalence and low levels of development.
While cumbersome deliberations have been made about the African writer’s thematic checklist, whatever that is, I will maintain with Bob Marley that “who feels it knows it.”
Rural communities, of all demographics, reel from the impact of the mistakes of history and the unnecessary evils of capitalism, climate change included.
From my life-long interaction with the village, I feel the artist’s voice is the missing dimension in the village square at a time when the hot issues of the day are literally burning rural communities.
A recent tour with the United Nations (UN)’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) to Mutasa, Nyika and Lupaka demonstrated that without sustained efforts to spread understanding, the debilitating patterns of climate change will be more felt than they can be managed.
In some cases, peasant farmers confine themselves to traditions which prejudice them of gainful livelihoods, sometimes they are cheated of the little they have through long-running unfair business practices, and in most cases what they need is a little help with requisite infrastructure so that they can thrive on their own.
Government extension officers and development agencies emphasised that realising the key Zim-Asset cluster on food and nutrition largely depends on equipping villagers with the necessary hardware (infrastructure) and software (knowledge of best practice).
This work, particularly the latter imperative, cannot be left to government and development agencies. Artists need to research and come up with humanised stories to equip villagers with an intimate knowledge of their environment.
This is nothing new as far as African literature is concerned. One of Africa’s foremost writers Ngugi wa Thiongo’s career has largely revolved around his dedicated service to the peasants. Niyi Osundare’s has also written elegant poetry in homage to nature.
Just that as the problem continues to be amplified out of proportion, there is need to scale up the creative effort to a dimension equal to the looming menace.
Despite the import of the debate, climate change has been the object of controversy, with policy makers, capitalist interests, conspiracy theorists and others sometimes crossing discordant notes.
If the issue is not easier than shooting a moving object in the rain for elites, it follows that credible research and food security solutions must be made available to villagers whose sustenance is primarily and almost exclusively agro-based.
Artists need to tear into this charging Minotaur with their pens and deliberate it in the language of the people. There are a million vacancies in the village square for writers to come up with empowering narratives for the people.
With the effects of climate change searing through the livelihoods of rural communities, the writer’s voice is the missing dimension in the pertinent and urgent campaign to guarantee food security.
Nature documentary producer and journalist Nicolai Hulot gives a disturbing assessment of the situation in Africa in an endnote for a “New African” special report, “The Heat is On: Time to Deliver.”
Hulot predicts that 90 percent of all natural resources and raw materials will be exhausted by the end of this century if the prevailing capitalist model stays put, and warns that should global warming rise by more than two degrees, Earth will be up for a cosmic tragedy.
“I have seen the desert spreading like a stream of lava. You can see it with the naked eye – and it is even more striking on satellite images – deforestation, desertification, the deterioration of ecosystems,” Hulot says in the endnote headed “To Save the Planet, We Need to Play by New Rules.”
“In just 10 years, you can see places that were swarming with life suddenly become virtual deserts… Wherever I go, farmers say to me, ‘Before I used to have two, three, four harvests its year, now I have only one,’” he says.
On a summative score, writers must take their place in the village square and confront the looming menace of climate change.
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