| Summary: | This paper examines African epistemologies of the environment as
a place-based perspective that regards nature as having its inherent
value, personhood, and agency. It presents the African way of
relating with or living in the environment as a way of becoming
one with nature beyond the discourse of the Anthropocene
and environmental change. In particular, we will take African
epistemological perspectives from Southern and Eastern Africa,
the notions of Ubuntu and Tabot, to reflect on how the environment
is traditionally perceived as sacred and part of a living community.
The paper also considers how African indigenous ways of
knowing and becoming one with nature have been supplanted
through epistemic violence, the imposition of western views of
the environment over African worldviews through systems and
institutions that exclude or exploit local knowledges. Using
Ethiopia as a case study, the paper demonstrates how epistemic
violence is enacted by excluding indigenous knowledges of the
environment from education and disseminating Eurocentric views
of the environment. It shall show how the collecting and hording
of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions has contributed
to this loss of indigenous environmental knowledge. Finally, we
will examine the importance of African perspectives to decolonise
our ways of knowing and relating with the environment, and offer
critical insights on how African epistemologies could be used to
build a future that is decolonised and sustainable.
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