Category Archives: pollution

To expand upon my latest entry at my political blog Project New Palmares, I’ve decided to stress the importance of Afrikan peoples to take global ecological and environmental issues very seriously. Especially in this the month of April, the month of Earth Day. Will we as Afrikans continue to allow others to speak for us when it comes to the fact that climate change will harm the Afrikan continent the most, or regarding the health and ecological disasters faced by Afrikan communities in the ghettos of America and elsewhere due to environmental racism?

Climate change will further expand the Sahara and Kalahari deserts on the one hand, while increasing flooding and torrential rain all across tropical Afrika and coastal Afrika on the other. Environmental racism means France and other European and Northern countries use Afrika as a dumping ground for nuclear and toxic waste, as happened in Cote D’Ivoire in 2006. The situation is similar in the Harlems and Newarks of the world, where asthma rates soar due to the location of waste processing sites, bus depots, and other unhealthy facilities in or near Afrikan communities in America, not in or around white and wealthy communities.

Pictured above is Wangari Maathai, leader of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya. In a nutshell, her legacy to Kenya and all of the developing world, as an environmentalist and political activist, has been the planting of 30 million trees to prevent soil erosion and improve rural woman’s lives by providing shelter, firewood, and access to clean water, among other things. The first Afrikan woman to become a Nobel laureate, I, as an Afrikan who deeply respects the virtues of planting trees and protecting the land, the watershed, the soil, and the whole ecosystem, hereby honor Queen Mother Maathai as a fantastic example for other Afrikans who should and must come to take the state of the natural environment extremely seriously.

I bring up the example of Wangari Maathai – the woman of the month here at Afrikan Raw Vegan Talk – to assert that Afrikans can address our ecological challenges autonomously and in simple ways. Planting trees is one of the most effective and beautiful methods. In Niger, the planting of trees is reversing desertification, as the linked 2007 NY Times article demonstrates. And these fruit trees also provide extra produce while fixing nitrogen in the soil for it to grow other crops. And as I have discussed in other blog entries here at Afrikan Raw Vegan Talk, the example of Yebua Danso at the Ahyiresu Naturalist Centre in Aburi, Ghana shows how effective and beautiful agroforestry can be – in which, to grow food, trees are actually planted, rather than chopped down in the old habit of “clearing the land.”

Afrika and countries and communities predominated by Afrikans – our abodes are not immune to calls to consume less and waste less. Living in Afrika I saw some of the worst pollution on Earth – creations mainly of our own habits and a lack of education on proper, sanitary waste disposal. In urban Ghana or Nigeria or elsewhere, one will notice plastic bags everywhere, clogging up the gutters, floating around even in the woods, all over the grimier areas of the open markets. By just eliminating plastic bag usage altogether and using reusable canvas or other sorts of bags and baskets, how much cleaner would our cities and towns and villages in Afrika and in the Afrikan world be? Even Bed-Stuy and Newark are polluted with this sort of waste and litter.

Solutions and ways to live by example as an ecologically responsible Afrikan – these are not to be found or expounded upon by white hippies on our behalf. We have to own this problem as much as, if not more than, anyone else in the world, no matter who created it. We often do little things and fall into socially engineered habits which reinforce the ecological crisis we all face, especially we Afrikans. So I hope others also contribute to simple practices and organizing tools for Afrikans to respond effectively to the environmental, ecological, and resultant economic crises of the day, which will also boost our food security, land arability, and water availability and quality.

What can we do? Some things that immediately come to my mind:
– Drive less; rely on ones own body and on public transport more for transportation
– Do not use disposable plastic bags; rather use reusable bags or baskets
– Use reusable bottles for water
– Go Vegan! Meat production is one of the greatest usurpers of natural resources, produces immense waste, is viciously cruel, and pastoralism in Afrika is fast expanding the Sahara as browsers chew away the greenery acre by acre
– Reuse ones goods as much as possible
– Consume less, shop less for non-essential things
– Eat more produce and natural foods, rather than heavily processed and therefore packaged foods whose containers cannot be discarded to decompose or compost organically
– Make the most of ones locale in terms of recreation, travel, etc. so as to not tax the environment too often by the heavy pollution spewed by current commercial air traffic
– Eat more locally-grown foods so as to reduce the carbon footprint of food transport over long distances
– Take the lights and other appliances off when not using them
– Live an overall more modest and simple life

Any other suggestions? Feel free to contribute. I only want the world to be cleaner and more sustainable, especially wherever Afrikans are found. And Afrikans MUST take the lead and be fully responsible in that effort. In Afrika, there too, people must consume, waste, pollute, and damage the land LESS. Development, as Frantz Fanon said, must not be into a new Europe or America. We Afrikans can and will make Afrika and Afrikan communities ecologically sustainable paradises, for ourselves to enjoy and raise the next generation within.