Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically. Although it was carefully reviewed, it may still contain errors and may not correspond exactly to the recorded audio track. Time stamps are indicative and may not correspond to the edited audio-video recording provided.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (00:02)
Hello and welcome back. Today we are going to talk about food sovereignty and what it takes to sustain it from a temporal perspective. To borrow the definition of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, we are going to discuss, I quote, "The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and the right to define their own food and agricultural systems," end of quote. More specifically, we are going to discuss food sovereignty considering marginalized groups who must find their ways between the respect of traditions and the development of new habits, and between adverse effects of erratic climate changes and the increasing social demand for food, energy and consumption. Time is central to understand what is at stake. On the one hand, climate resilience requires farmers and fishermen to nurture their knowledge of natural rhythms and to develop their capacity to cope with the fluctuations that characterize climate change and their impact on human and non-human beings. On the other hand, they also must negotiate temporal pressures that come from governments and the economy to accelerate transformations in the way they live, work, and interact with the natural environment. To discuss these issues, we have the privilege to welcome today Daniela De Fex-Wolf and Sidney Muhongi, two early career researchers who are members of the British Academy-funded program, The Times of a Just Transition. Daniela De Fex-Wolf is a biologist and geographer from Columbia. She currently works as an early career researcher at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota. Her main interests and areas of expertise include fisheries, food sovereignty, humanitarian crisis, and the exploration of care as a powerful motor for transformation. Daniela, thank you for being with us today. Our second guest is Sidney Muhongi. Sidney is based at Rhodes University in South Africa. He's the lead researcher in a knowledge translation project titled Visualizing Time in Agriculture, a Participatory Approach for Sustainability, funded by the British Academy. Sidney has been awarded various awards for his engagement in sustainable development initiatives, including the outstanding alumni award by Nottingham Trent University, the Hearth Fellowship by the British Council Scotland, and the Commonwealth PhD split-side scholarship by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. Sidney's research focuses on rethinking the role of agricultural extension officers and agricultural extension services in the context of climate change, and examines the changes needed in their vocational, educational and training to build farmers' resilience to climate change. Sidney, it's a pleasure to welcome you today. Thank you for being with us.
Sidney Muhangi (03:06)
Thanks for having me, Michel.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (03:08)
So, before diving into today's topic, could you both tell us a bit about the origins of your interest in the study of time in your respective fields? When and how did you realize that time was important in your research and what do you find stimulating and critical about it?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (03:11)
I think that, for me, time is like a very crucial factor in any research, in any field of knowledge. And I think that the first time that I realized that time was a very informative variable, I was studying biology and I was working on a project about migratory fishes in Magdalena River. That is the main river that crossed Columbia. So, in that project, I realized that all our activities, our fieldwork planning and all the things that we are doing related with that project was very linked with time. So, we depend on rainy seasons that occurs certain months. We depends of the fishermen stories about if certain trees are blooming or not, or if there are some species changing their habits. We are also dependent on phases of the moon. So, these type of things are very related with time. So, I think that that was the first time that I realized that time was a very, very crucial factor in the research. And later during my field work for my PhD, I was studying an humanitarian crisis in Colombia in the north of the country that â mainly affects the WayĂșu people in the Guajira community, an indigenous community there. So, there time was a very important â question when we are trying to understand the origin of that crisis and how people are dealing with that, and how was the life of people before that crisis. And time was also like a way to link the current situation with memory and paths and strategies that people are having. And now, with this project that brings us together, the Times of the Just Transition, it was a very nice opportunity to think about a future. That was something that I was never think before that. And it was really nice to see how a future is something that you are able to build even with past and even with present situations and was very paradoxical that the future can be very outdated, depending on who you are hearing and how you are listened to and it can be even very unjust if you just repeat things that you are doing in the past. So, I think that time arrives in different â ways for me and that is a very nice realization that I was able to see thanks to this project.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (06:13)
Thanks Daniela. What about you Sidney?
Sidney Muhangi (06:16)
Yeah, I think really there's sort of similarities between myself and Daniela. I was born and raised in a rural area where agriculture was the mainstay of the of the local community and time and timing were crucial to people's livelihoods and survival. If you missed a season, then you have no livelihood. Normally, we would have the planting seasons, weeding seasons, harvesting seasons, and we knew that you have to harvest at this time of the year because if you don't do that then it will rain and all your produce will be destroyed or ravaged. And then there you would have to know the importance of seasonality and timing in agriculture. So, for me, that from childhood has always been part of me. And when I remember in 2010, there was a blight that ravaged banana plantations, which is a step food for our community. Knowing how important agriculture was for my community, we decided to invent a mushroom farming enterprise. And this worked on a different time scale and season compared to the previous agriculture. That is how I started to understand that time and timing in agriculture was very important. And now coming to the age of climate change, bringing these new dynamics to agriculture and generally the livelihoods, thinking about agriculture, I thought maybe I need to study food security and that's what motivated me to study my Master's in food security and development. And then after that, I enrolled in PhD and I thought it was very important to study climate change and environment in order to contribute to smallholder farmers who really form part of my story. And that's how it came about in my PhD. And then later, fortunately, I come into this program, which was servicing this element of time and temporality. And, for me, I felt I was home. And that's why I was very excited to join this program. And I'm really glad I'm part of it.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (08:41)
Excellent. Thank you, Sidney. I'd like now to shift toward the dedicated topics each of you is working on and how your contribution relates to each other. So, Daniela, you're currently studying how energy infrastructure development disrupts the temporalities and the rhythms that organize indigenous communities. Could you tell us about your current research on energy transition in Colombia and its impact on the food sovereignty of these communities? Do you have any example of what is at stake?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (09:14)
Yes, of course. I think that it's important to start explaining what the energy transition â means in Colombia and where it's having place here. So, in Colombia, these energy transitions plans are very linked with the climate change mitigations, â agendas and commitments. So, this contribute the shift from fossil fuels to other types of energies as a way to achieve these goals. And these have encouraged the development of this green and clean infrastructure that is related with energy transition, mainly wind farms. So, my project is located in La Guajira. That is the same place that I have been studying from my PhD. In this project we work together with the WayĂșu people, that is the main indigenous group that lives this area of the country. This region of the country is like a focus of interest for institutions and companies because the wind consistency and force are very stable and you can have that all year. This is why this is happening in La Guajira and not in other regions of Colombia. But the bad thing about this is that these projects are located in Guajira people territories. So, this represents a conflictive situation when you have this ancestral group that have rights over this territory, but you also have the interests of these companies and institutions around these territories. The climate change agenda is a very powerful way to justify the displacement of people or the change over their living. But something that is very important, in this case, is that the WayĂșu people, they are mainly located in a desert. And the desert is a very fragile ecosystem. Even if you do a very small change, you can have like large repercussions on people's lives. So, I think that food sovereignty is a very good way to perceive this, how even a very small change can have bigger changes on people's lives. So, for example, specifically connected with food sovereignty, the wind energy processes and how they are built, they construct roads and that represent a change in the territory. And that can have implications on animal migrations that could have implications on food systems. This is also infrastructure that you require a lot of water to build that and also to sustain the people that are working within this type of projects. And you can imagine that in a desert, the water is a very scarce resource and it's very complicated to divide that resource between this infrastructure and the people, right, and other not human beings too. Also, like the movements of the blades that generate the wind energy can have a impact, can, could impact like two very key pollinators in La Guajira that are bats and birds, and that could have consequences on the food systems for the WayĂșu people. That depends of these connections between not humans and their food systems to be able to keep that systems and sustain that. And also I feel that it's nice to mention that the wind farms are not only planned to occur in land, but also in the ocean. And that could have impacts on the fisher, for example, the fisheries, for example, because you need to restrict an area for the infrastructures. Also that could generate electromagnetism that can change the signals for the fauna and other not human beings. And then that altogether can have very big implications on WayĂșu people food sovereignty and food systems.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (13:43)
Okay, thank you. That gave us already a full picture of what's at stake. Sidney, you are working on agricultural extension in South Africa, which involves providing education and resources for smallholder farming to achieve sustainability, livelihoods and food security. Could you give us examples of how climate changes disturb and impact the rhythms of agriculture in South Africa?
Sidney Muhangi (14:08)
Sure, thanks Michel. So, South Africa, according to the recent figures, has more than two and a half million smallholder households. And that might translate into many millions of people. And in almost end of 2019, South Africa, and in particular the Eastern Cape, was declared a water disaster area because of climate change. And with that comes the risks and the challenges to especially smallholder farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture. The major challenge that the farmers have been facing, particularly, are the shifts in rainfall patterns. Traditionally, you would find that the season starts raining in September and October, but currently it rains around December. So that, you know, it sort of has affected farmers in timing when the planting seasons are. And, you know, this brings challenges where you find that farmers are missing the planting windows and sometimes the crops fail to germinate due to dry spells or even sometimes they don't harvest at all. So, you have farmers having reduced yields or total crop failure. You know, last year, I went into a community and I was speaking to some of the farmers and these were livestock farmers as well as crop farmers. They were telling me that they had spent like four months without any rain and the government couldn't help them. They would expect the government to, for instance, bring water for their livestock. But that's not possible. That's such an expensive process. And whenever it rains again, which is another point of how these shifts are affecting farmers, you'd have an increased frequency of floods affecting big areas where farmers cannot do anything, destroys the infrastructure, destroys the fences of their gardens. And that comes with implications like limited access in the distribution of seeds and also the produce. So, you have these shifts also affecting the farmers. In Eastern Cape where I'm currently working, you'd find that farmers are collaborating well with extension officers, but now you find that extension officers themselves do not have the knowledge of sustainability. So, they can't support farmers to navigate these kinds of challenges. So, this is what I've found to be a major challenge facing the farmers here in South Africa, having these shifting rainfall patterns, you know, intensifying droughts and floods are the most common, as well as pests and diseases, especially in areas which normally get these heat waves, particularly in the South, the KwaZulu-Natal area.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (17:27)
Thank you, Sidney. Keri, you want to jump in?
Keri Facer (17:30)
Yeah, it's so helpful to hear both of your stories from such different places. And the thing that's really coming to me is just the profound disruption of rhythms that you're both talking about. And also the interconnection of these problems, because on one level, Sidney, I can hear you talking about the way that climate change is disrupting rhythms. And then Daniela, you're talking about the way the green infrastructure that some people are suggesting is going to be the way to address climate change is also itself disrupting rhythm. So, we've got the complexity of this problem just face to face with just the two of you telling your stories. So, I'm just left with this really strong sense of the deep intimate interconnections of all of these beings and species in these different places and the ways in which both climate change and our human led response to it are really inadequate in, if you like, attending to and taking care of these existing rhythms. Thanks for sharing those stories.
Sidney Muhangi (18:28)
Thank you.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (18:30)
I was reading articles both of you have written and I was struck by how complementary both of your current research projects are, although located in very different environments. Both of your contributions locate indeed the struggle to sustain food sovereignty in between temporal constraints that come from changes occurring in the natural environment, and you have illustrated that point on one side, and also in society and institutions on the other side. So, my next question, I'll start with you Daniela, how would you describe the struggles and needs of the communities you have been working with when it comes to dealing with conflicting temporalities and rhythms?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (19:16)
In the case of the WayĂșu people, â many of their needs and struggles are very related with decades of large extractivist projects in their territories that come together with a lot of changes and complications in cultural, social, environmental, and political dimensions. When I was working with the WayĂșu people and speaking with them or living with them in their communities, it was very sad for me to realize that the things that they are demanding is basic human rights. They are not demanding any other like very exotic thing or something like that. They are just demanding â health care, clean water, a right to the territory, autonomy and of course food. It's like a very simple package of things I was hoping that in 2025 we could check that in our list of things to do for humanity but it seems like it's not the case. So, the struggle of the WayĂșu people are very related with these human rights demands. And it's also very associated with the relationships that they are creating with institutions and companies through these decades of land occupation and use. So, I think that when they are going to negotiate with these business and institutions, it's very interesting to see how one of the main arguments that WayĂșu people are putting in the table as one of the first and more important is how the life of the WayĂșu people and the continuity of this community in Colombia depends on the relationship that they are able to create and sustain with humans and not human beings. And if these companies like cut this relationship because they are building infrastructure or because they are creating a very big mine or things like that... If they are cutting this relationship, you are putting risk the continuity of this community. So, it's really nice to see when you see how these people, how the WayĂșu people negotiate and what type of arguments they use. They always emphasize that their lives depends on other rhythms too, like the rhythm of the wind or the rhythm of the rainy seasons or the rhythm of the harvest as same as occurs for Sidney in South Africa. And all these type of rhythms and relationships and associations are the pillars of their lives. It's very, frustrating to see how when they are talking with these people, it seems like these other beings and readings and ways of life have like no space in the communications and dialect.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (22:28)
To piggy-tail on what you just said, I was reminded reading another article also on the same topic about the fact that one of the injustices that those farmers or fishermen are in the frontline. And, so they are experiencing changes that they are in a way the first one to witness and observe. And, therefore, they are the first impacted by it, but they're also the first to to build knowledge about how to cope with it and to observe how those changes occur. Do you see in your research and in your encounters that there are difficulties related to the need to communicate about a reality that has not been yet well documented, for example, from a scientific perspective or in terms of the strategies that they have to invent to cope with such changes? The fact that they are on the front line, how do you see that impacting the challenges in the way they negotiate with institutions?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (23:29)
Well, I think that it can apply to other contexts too, that there are some types of knowledge that people validate more than others. So, for example, if I produce a paper explaining these things, and I wrote that in English, for example, and I put that in a certain journal or thing like that, part of history, that part of the, that claim will be here for someone in the government or things like that. But if this group of people, the WayĂșu people, do the same with their means, with the ways to communicate things, they will be like ignored because they are not validated. They are not put in a journal. There is a lot of frustration in these processes because they say like, we are saying that for decades and no one is hearing that.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (24:23)
Thank you. Sidney, in your work with farmers, how would you describe the struggles and what needs to be learned from a temporal perspective to mitigate the impact of climate change?
Sidney Muhangi (24:36)
Yeah, interestingly, I find some you know, cross cutting themes between my area and Daniela's area. One of the, you know, the struggles are the disrupted rhythms of seasons. And because farmers now no longer know when to plant. And, you know, the seasons where they do land preparation or buying inputs or weeding or harvesting, you know, have all changed due to climate variability. It has brought in like temporary disorientation where they are not sure exactly when to do what as farmers. And it also has left them, you know, not trusting their own knowledge systems because this is something they have known since childhood. They've practiced this for years, for decades. So, that is one of the biggest struggles. And then there comes another struggle, which is, you know, that sort of time compression, assuming there's flooding, or there's a long dry spell. But then there are also slow institutions in terms of response. I interface with farmers a lot. And some of the struggles that they surface in our conversations, one of them is that they can be promised inputs... The season starts in December, but the inputs come in January. So, then that means that they are not able to plant because they are rushing to start to the season. The season has also shifted. So, there's that slow response, but also there's that sort of trap between the slow response of institutions and the fast moving risks of climate change. One of the other struggles that especially farmers in rural areas are facing is that they feel that there's that intergenerational time rupture where they feel the young people are no longer interested in practicing agriculture, either because they feel it's too risky or it's outdated. And, you know, they're not interested in getting involved in that kind of agriculture, small-holder agriculture. And that leaves the elderly, those who have practiced agriculture for long, feeling as if that knowledge is not going to be transferred across generations. So, that is also another struggle that they're facing â here in South Africa, especially in rural areas where agriculture has been a source of livelihood for a very long time. And to respond to the second part of your question, what needs to be learned? I think that there's a need to sort of strengthen local climate rhythms. And one of the tools that I found to be really helpful are the climate calendars, which we normally refer to as planting calendars. And I find this to be very useful because it sort of blends the traditional and scientific knowledge in order to track these shifts in seasons over time. And it's one of the tools that I'm working on with the local farmers and other youth groups that are involved in agriculture, because we feel that if we bring in that traditional knowledge that they have about seasons and seasonality and farming with the scientific knowledge, then we will be able to create a tool that can sort of help them to navigate these shifts in climate rhythms. Then the second one, I think there's a need to adopt sustainable farming practices. And I've worked on projects, especially here in a place called Alice in Middle Drift in Eastern Cape Province. We were working with farmers and training them how to do activities like rainwater harvesting, for example, and getting farmers to practice agroecology and soil restoration, mulching, and seed saving. Such kind of activities, they can help them to deal with these challenges of climate change. So, those are adaptive measures that we â were teaching them to do. Then I also think, and I'm saying this because this is what extension officers themselves were saying in my interviews with them, they did not have the tools to build early warning systems. They mentioned that there were no central databases, for instance, where they could get information to share with farmers about these changes that have become frequent. So, I think developing early warning systems and these seasonal forecasting tools might be very useful to share with farmers through radio, mobile phones and workshops. And finally to advocate for institutional time shifts... There's bureaucracy in government, everyone knows. So, this top down level of planning might not respond fast enough to the needs of the farmers. So, I think there's need to decentralize and have these institutions moving swiftly to support farmers in building climate resilience.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (30:14)
Thank you, Sidney. Daniela, I think you wanted to add something.
Daniela De Fex Wolf (30:18)
Yes, yes, is really interesting how our countries are connected in many ways and how there are a lot of similarities between what Sidney talk and what is happening in Colombia and other places in South America. So, it's really nice to see that. But I was thinking that you say like this duality between the slow institutions and the fast climate change. â And it's the same here in Colombia, but there are certain processes or certain issues that they are very slow, like creating these participatory places and hear other voices or whatever. But there are other things where they are very quick in the action. So, they are very quick in creating plans to allow the environmental licenses to go faster or they are very quick to approve projects in certain areas. it's not like a general behavior. It's a very selective one. And so I was wondering, is the same for you? You are realizing that in South Africa, like for some issues, they are very quickly and for other things, they are very slow. Or if you think there is like slow in every aspect of their job?
Sidney Muhangi (31:40)
Locally, you find that some municipalities have got, they call them local economic development agencies and offices for the Department of Agriculture that can respond to the needs of the farmers in their capacity. But the other huge challenge is that they cannot manage as local offices or local responders that might need approvals, for instance, from the regional province or from the national level. And that becomes a challenge. One of the examples is during the floods last October. Some roads were washed away and some of those roads, the local municipalities might not have the capacity to fix them. So, that takes time. Accessibility becomes a challenge for extension farmers as well as other farmers or anybody crossing from one village to another or from one region to another. So, you're right. I think the response depends on the gravity of the challenge... Challenge that can be managed at a local level and normally handled by the local offices that are concerned with looking after the farmers and supporting them. But challenges that normally require huge amounts of money, or technology or equipment might have to be handled at a regional or national level, which is slow.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (33:09)
Keri, I see you want to skip in.
Keri Facer (33:10)
Yeah, I mean, what I hear here is something interesting about the speed of finance in all of this. Like, what does money make go faster? And what does it make go slower? Because I hear something slightly different in both of you. Sidney, you're talking about kind of the scale of the challenge. But Daniela, I think I hear in your comment that sometimes you have a sense that when there's enough money at stake or enough profit to be made, that governments and businesses can move very quickly. And so that question of when strategically there are delays for intentional purposes, and when strategically things get to move very, very fast for some purposes. And I think both of your examples draw up the fact that there isn't actually a sort of time of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy's time can be multiple and strategic and at particular points for particular purposes, for particular groups to enable some things to work well and others not. So, it's fascinating stuff. I was also interested in your point about intergenerational rupture that you're talking about, Sidney, and I can imagine there may be something similar going on in your setting, Daniela, this question of a kind of continued relationship with a land that is being broken. And what that does to a sense of a kind of imagination of a future to me. I imagine that that is catastrophic for a sense of identity and self. It may not be the first time that it's happened, but it sounds pretty serious. Anyway, just my observation. I'll hand back to Michel.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (34:44)
The four of us met through the Times of a Just Transition program that's funded by the British Academy and that we mentioned earlier. So, we share a concern for the transformations of the world we are living in, taking into consideration the individual and collective actions that shape processes of transition, including social and ecological ones. So, my next question, Daniela, is for you. In your work, you evoke the need to develop strategies for coping with pressures from different institutions that impose their own temporalities on Indigenous communities. How would you describe what is at stake from a social and environmental justice perspective? What does it take to defend or sustain temporalities and rhythms such as those that organize the communities you've been working with?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (35:38)
Well, I think that before answering your question, it is important for me to say that one thing that I have learned of this project is that urgency and injustice are things that don't always go hand in hand. It's like that they can be even antonymous issues. I truly believe, in the case of my project and the things that I am seeing here in Colombia, that if you truly want to achieve the just energy transition here in Colombia, it's essential to create like spaces for participation and also that enable to understand other people experiences and hear other voices related with the issues that we are facing that, in this case, can be very related with climate change and all the struggles and complications related with that. And I think that create this type of spaces requires a lot of time, patience, calm, care also and when urgency takes the front position of that, important voices can be â ignored or can be disregarded, perpetuating some forms of violence and injustice that these people, the WayĂșu people, are facing for decades. From an environmental perspective, accelerating this energy transition process can mean overlooking, for example, key ecological processes and factors that we are missing to the opportunity to understand before going to really implement energy transition processes. So, for example, if the government are planning to install some wind farms in the ocean, it could be very useful to have mechanisms to monitor that change and what that could represent for the marine life and for the WayĂșu people and the people that are fishing, for example. But in the case of Colombia, for example, we don't even know our biodiversity in the ocean. We don't even know the climate change impacts on the Caribbean Sea. and if you are trying to follow this pace of the climate change agenda, you may not have time to create these baselines of this information that we need. And may be too late when you install that and then you realize that, we don't know how to monitor this, if this is working or not, or if this is having an impact or not, if we don't have anything to compare that. So, to defend like other readings of life and other ways of living is, I think that is very, very interesting... to like paying close attention to everyday life. In the case of the WayĂșu, for example, it's really nice, â like, could be very informative to see how they are living, how the life is for the WayĂșu people, who are leading the struggles, â what they need now, what are the demands or things like that, and how we can do in our positions to maybe create a more dignified life for them. And all this work requires a lot of sensibility and a lot of attention and a lot of like, be able to identify these relationships. And all of that requires time, requires like a conscious of other readings or other things that may not be visible, but they exist. And yes, as I said before, like urgencies is like can blind that possibility.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (39:27)
Thank you. Thank you, Daniela. Sidney, in your research, you distinguish between the situation of industrial farming and the situation of marginalized groups such as Black farmers in South Africa. When it comes to mitigating climate changes, how does social injustice manifest itself? What does it mean in terms of strategies of empowerment?
Sidney Muhangi (39:54)
I think it's really important to understand that South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. When you bring it into the climate justice perspective in South Africa, you find that there's unequal exposure to risk. So, you have commercial farmers and smallholder farmers, mainly poor, rural, and most of these have historically been marginalized, like in the Eastern Cape, especially. And these people are more exposed to these natural hazards, the climate induced impact. But these vulnerabilities are not just produced by climate, they are produced by the histories of injustices and like land dispossession and under investment, as well as excluded from decision making. So, that's a major issue. You find a community which were formerly called Bantustan is adjacent to a commercial farm. Commercial farmers have got the finances and the technologies and they can navigate these long spells of drought, but these other farmers living in these rural poor communities cannot. The commercial farmers have got the capacity to navigate some of these challenges, but the rural poor Black farmers cannot, and that is rooted in the traditional injustices of colonialism and land dispossession. And then you also have another issue, which is these farmers are excluded from decision making. And as I mentioned, most of the decisions are top down, made from a province or a national level. And then the farmers are expected sometimes to just adopt some of these programs that are designed at a national level, some of which are not aligned to the place-based realities where the farmers are living. And, so, this exclusion of local voices, especially women and youth, it tends to mean that these solutions brought are imposed rather than generated from ground up. And that also sort of creates that level of injustice because the means of adaptation to climate change are not generated from the communities that are facing the challenges themselves, but are imposed on them by bureaucrats seated in offices. You also have this unequal distribution and access of resources for mitigation. If you compare rural and urban, then you see this kind of injustice. Rural areas are not normally thought about. And one of the things that really struck me when I was in one of the communities, which is near the coast... South Africa has got this communal land ownership and some of this land is looked after by the traditional chiefs. So, you have got companies that are trying to establish wind farms, bringing their wind turbines and establishing them in the land that is owned by the community. But the communities are not consulted sometimes. So, you find that because not one person can come to claim, then the entire community loses in that fashion. You find that urban and rural areas have got different ways of accessing resources to mitigate the climate, but also, I mean, related to what Daniela was talking about, you have these, you know, the government facilitating investors, who are called investors, to establish wind farms into areas that are owned by the community. which I consider that to be a form of injustice because land access is crucial, especially for these rural farmers.
Keri Facer (44:14)
Yeah, can I jump in there actually? Because I can hear both of you talking about the gap between decision making on the ground and, if you like top down policy making. And the idiocy of that was brought home to me recently by a colleague I was talking to. She was talking about the lack of engagement with women and children in agricultural decisions in, I think it was in South Africa
So an overseas aid agency had come in and spoken to all the male farmers and they had given tractors to the community as the strategy that this is how we're going to sort things out. So, suddenly the male farmer is able to drive his tractor really successfully and is able to plow, you know, 10 acres instead of one acre. What they didn't do was talk to the women and the children who are responsible for plucking the soil and for getting rid of the stones and for doing all of the other land work. So, their work has just massively increased exponentially and there's been no engagement with them around it. So we need to shift to this question of participation, but that's one of the huge challenges in this area, isn't it? The gap between the speed of political decision-making and the speed of a kind of participatory process. So, I'm wondering where the models are, the examples are for different modes of participation and are we starting to see examples? I'm thinking about things like the World Social Forum as an alternative to Davos, for example. Are we starting to see alternative modes of organizing where groups are getting together to kind of get in advance of some of this? It feels to me that, again, there's a temporal issue. How do you get ahead? We know that green extractivism is going to follow on the footsteps of fossil fuel extractivism. This is the same process. So, how do we get ahead of that? Are either of you seeing any examples of this?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (46:05)
I was thinking about the children and women issue in these situations and is the same here for Colombia. I think that, again time is a very useful way to try to address that issue. Because if you go to a community when you are planning to construct something, or you are planning to do a project or things like that, and you take enough time to realize how the people life works there and how are their readings and what they are doing every day, then you will realize that the times that a woman have and the time that men have is very different, and the way that they use that is very different. So, for example, you convocate a meeting and you realize that only men arrive on that meeting. And it's because you forgot to pay attention that women have care related activities that made them unable to go to that meeting because it occurs in the same time that they are cooking or they are taking care of children and other people. But if you have enough time in in these places, then you will start to realize that there are these differences and then you can, for example, convocate meetings in times that you realize that women are more unable to participate. For example, you create a meeting and you are like providing food or providing people to take care of kids when you are doing your meeting. So, I think that these are like some examples that came to my head when thinking how you can really create spaces where you can ensure that all the communities participating for a very local level. In a big level like forum or things like that is different.
Sidney Muhangi (47:59)
To go back to what Keri asked whether there are farmer groups that are trying to get together to do these kinds of things. Yes, in South Africa here, especially in the Eastern Cape, there's a group called Imvotho Bubomi, which is translated as Water for Food. It's a group that brings together researchers and farmers and extension officers and representatives from NGOs and the Department of Agriculture. And this is sort of an online learning space. And there's this use of socialized technologies, like a WhatsApp group, and information is shared from experts. Challenges are shared from farmers. So, there's this sort of co-learning that is happening in this group and it's helping the farmers a lot to cope with some of the challenges and sharing this knowledge together and learning together.
Keri Facer (48:59)
Great to hear that. Thanks. Thanks, Sidney.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (49:02)
We're getting close to the end. So, I'd like to do with you the same way we did with our previous guests. we always end the conversation by trying to reconnect with our own intimate experience of time. So, to conclude this episode, I'd like to ask you, how do you nurture rhythms that resource and feed yourself in your everyday life?
Daniela De Fex Wolf (49:28)
Well, I think that this is a very beautiful question and makes me think about what I do on a daily basis to do that. And I think that one thing that I truly believe is that we need to ritualize life... make very small rituals throughout our day to celebrate things or to mark important issues, but also to celebrate the quotidianity and the daily life that is something that we cannot take for granted because for many people it's very different. So, on a daily basis, one thing that I do to try to nourish the things that I like and the readings that I want to keep and try to avoid the accelerated issues that are behind this door is like, I don't know, maybe some time of silence, complete silence, or maybe some minutes on the sun, or maybe spending some time with people that I love, or, of course, like cooking and eating things that I like... things that like bring me back to the things that I like and the times that I would like to keep.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (50:34)
Thank you, Daniela. What about you, Sidney?
Sidney Muhangi (50:38)
Yes, for me, I think one of the things that I've learned that I normally do is to listen more because that's when I learn. I learn by listening and that has sort of helped me to learn more things related to the time, the time that I have to allocate my activities, the time that I have to maybe do my research, intervene and work with communities. Listening has become vital in my daily life and even my professional life. The second thing that, you know, and this is for me, this is the lesson. It is the humility to know that I'm not the solution. I'm not the one to bring up the solution, but people who have these lived experiences know more than I do. And that humility has helped me to sort of learn more. So, for me, I find that my interaction with time on my daily life is to just be humble enough to know I do not know it all. I need to learn from someone else and to be silent and listen to especially the people I work with. Sometimes I do that â with my children. I don't have to always give them commands of do this, do this, don't do that. Sometimes you listen and learn. So, that's how I utilize time. And, finally, I think there's not a single solution for the challenges that we face in our lives, we face in our professional lives. In my lessons, as a professional, still as a student, as a scholar, is that there's not one solution. And if I relate that to â the topic that we were talking about, we need more time to innovate. We need more time to learn. And we need more time to create solutions that could together help us to sort of navigate the challenge that is at hand.
Michel Alhadeff-Jones (52:47)
Thank you both very much for taking the time to have this conversation with us. Daniela De Fex-Wolf from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota and Sidney Muhangi from Rhodes University in South Africa. Thank you very much to both of you.
Daniela De Fex Wolf (53:03)
Thank you for having us. It was really nice.
Keri Facer (53:04)
Thank you.
Sidney Muhangi (53:04)
Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, fascinating conversation.
