Since its inaugural conference held in May 2016, in Lagos, Nigeria, AROCSA has explored a number of themes in its annual conferences. These include ‘Africa in a Changing Global Context: People, Production, and Politics’ (2017), ‘Understanding and Navigating Regionalism in Africa’ (2018), ‘Leveraging Technology for Effective Government and Civil Society: A Review of Africa’s Digital Renaissance and Innovations in Civil Society (2019), and ‘Towards a more Sustainable Civil Society in Africa: Inclusion, Governance, and Impact’ (2021).
The 2020 conference was postponed due to the COVID pandemic. While these previous themes no doubt remain relevant in Africa’s developmental discourse, there are other equally pressing issues that present existential threats to African communities and ecosystems that require urgent attention.
Against this background, the sixth annual AROCSA conference interrogates the role of African civil society in safeguarding and supporting human and environmental health on the continent in the face of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which exposed the fragility of health infrastructure across Africa, as well as the increasing menace of climate change and how it threatens the existence of not only whole communities and ecosystems, but also how it impacts physical and mental health, livelihoods, food security, biodiversity, resource governance, and economic development on the continent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This definition, according to Hanna and Coussens (2001), should serve as a reminder that redefining the view of environmental health and the natural environment requires many shifts in thinking, as well as a willingness to pursue diverse approaches.
Individuals do not exist separate from their environment and advances in the field of environmental health have taught us much about human health hazards. We are a lot more aware of how (global) climate change is likely to fuel the spread of infectious diseases, for instance. This latter point brings into sharper focus the nexus between human and environmental health.
While the trend of COVID infection and death rates in Africa has remained relatively low to date in comparison with other regions of the world, reference to dealing with infectious diseases such as COVID-19 especially given the issues of vaccine inequity and double standards when it comes to vaccine distribution and production on the continent is key to a proper elaboration of the conference theme.
In 2015 the UN launched the SDGs with the promise to ‘leave no one behind in achieving sustainable development by 2030. Given the traditional role civil society organizations have played in Africa’s development, there is a need for increased engagement with the government and private sector in order to achieve this goal. Unforeseen events such as the pandemic have stalled progress. But the challenges we face, unfortunately, including the threat of climate change have not abated during the intervening period. In many respects, they have actually grown even worse.
Thus, these twin threats demand more active and imaginative civil society, state, and non-state collaborations in order to find long-term solutions. They require African civil society organizations to be more active in advocating for and working with state actors to establish climate-friendly policies that protect both human and environmental health, and ultimately remove barriers to achieving sustainable development for all Africans.
Therefore, AROCSA welcomes proposals connecting these contextual issues in the themes and sub-themes without necessarily excluding work on other key civil society-related agendas.
