Doing environmentalism amid common but differentiated radical uncertainties in Mozambique

In my short experience as a worker for the then Ministry of Environment and now Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development, then as a social researcher, and PhD student on environment in Mozambique, I have met NGO activist, state bureaucrats, local communities and their significant others as well as scientists. One thing always stood up in my encounters with them: how dependent they all are on external forces which most often work within the frames of neoliberalism.

When talking to communities I learned how dependent they are on the government and NGOs; when talking to NGOs they also told me how vulnerable their situation was and how they felt the government does not stick to their words, laws and policies. The NGOs also mentioned shortage of funding and dependency from international donors. The state bureaucrats characterized by underpayment, unattractive working conditions, and all the ordens superiores practices, feel that there is so much one can do. It is no secret for anyone that Mozambican government is going to engage where the money is and usually this money comes from external donors. Scientists in Mozambique really like the others that they must make ends meet. Consultancies are the go to sollution when it comes to surviving and getting by. Funding for science in Mozambique comes mostly from external donors who like with bureaucracy, activism and community life frame what issues need to be focused on.

A deep present manifest itself in these entanglements: colonial legacies, present dependencies, pressing issues of the present like poverty, epidemics, illiteracy and their effects are now entanglement which a much bigger challenge climate change: Achille Mbembe would call this a negative moment. A rather economicist concept but it helps focusing on the materiality of new challenges “adding up” to and clashing (or not) with already existing slow and radical violent processes. The million-dollar questions is: what is to be done considering these imbroglios?

This essay is too short for such a big endeavor. However, the answers to this should not only be the usual formulas: technical fixes, imposition of western frameworks in Mozambique, speeches on gender inclusion, etc. It gets boring when going to workshops and conferences in Mozambique and what ones hears are the same mantras, which I agree must be repeated, but I also argue that there is a huge gap between saying we need to change and doing transformational change. I linger more on doing transformational change below.

It has been a commonplace in NGO and social arenas the idea of denouncing mostly the government and international bodies. This criticism is not misplaced, it is a necessary thing to be done so that we can start doing transformational change, but it usually brings to impasses. For example, on Wednesday, this month 2018, I took part in a workshop organized by an NGO working on Climate Justice in Mozambique. After heavy criticism on the role of government in Mozambique, the representative replied with we are doing our job and we now have in place actions like production of local adaptation plans that address issues of climate change in Mozambique. During a short break I introduced myself to the government representative as a former worker of the Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development, and I was now doing my PhD studies. The perceived link between us helped collapse some of the walls the representative had built in the perceived “’hostile environment to government” they were in which is funny because that space was supposed to be a place of dialogue and bridging. I told them that it was interesting the kind of job they are doing and I liked some of the issues they raised. The representative replied well, what was I supposed to do, crumble and cry in front of these people? I know these people? And it is good to know that there is in the Ministry a person [me] who was getting educated in environment. At the end of the event everyone departed to their differentiated radical uncertainties and what is the take away?

The above comment was eye-opening. The “they” puts the critics of the government as a group out there to be dealt with and the “us” as a group that does something to make things happen. This formula of identity as oppositional is not just limited to state bureaucrats. I have heard it from scientists, NGOs, community members, and donors during my fieldwork and work at the government. The old politics of finger-pointing has led us to this impasse in which frontier making and maintenance keeps us shouting at each other across constructed divides, go back home frustrated about how “they” cannot understand “our” point of view; what “we” are doing is vital. Usually the divides fall under either development or environment. There is no half way, there are no concessions to make from “our” part. “They” are the ones who are wrong! While trapped into these impasses neocoloniality and extractivism gain materiality and further engravings into our bodies, souls, minds, land, air, fields, homes, cemeteries, etc.

Ghassan Hage has found himself in this impasse, and realized that denouncing has taken him thus far a socially produced wall. He then suggested another kind of doing politics, he calls alter-politics. I suggests a way of thinking about how to communicate about what we care the most about without only demonizing and dehumanizing the “others”, who also have stuff and people that they care about in the context of the deep present I described above.

The former US president Barack Obama once said that you can scream your way to the decision-making table but once you are there screaming is not enough. Bruno Latour has been working on the idea of one needing to learn how to speak well about what others care about, and extremely inviting us to love our monsters or as Donna Haraway would say staying with the trouble or maybe “making kin not enemies”. The hard question is when is loving our monsters beyond a threshold? What is that threshold and how it gets to be determined? The stakes should inform the replies to these questions and the stakes are too high to conform to doing science, bureaucracy, activism and community life as usual.

A young girl from Nangaze holding a mushroom and pounding stick, photo by the author

It is about the life of the planet and most humans who have been put in radically vulnerable positions by few humans. Debates have been going on for so long and good things have been accomplished in Mozambique and worldwide; I think it is important to acknowledge these wins but it is not yet time to pet our backs. However, it is not also enough to break our spirits, fall into anxieties, fear, guilty, and narcissistic victimhood that (present) times have produced. Healing is a necessity, but healing should not be enough to justify any actions. Renewables, tecno-fixes, traditionalism, Westernism and all other isms done in extractivist and neocolonial frameworks need challenging for they only continue the status quo – differentiated radical uncertainties. Things are not good just because we label them green it’s their actual betterment of the many poor’s conditions without further harm to environment in the present and future that is the ruler: Environment and development can be love mates.

I have met bureaucrats who love the work they do and the ones who are there just for the pay, the same goes for scientists, activists, donors and community leaders in Zambezia and Maputo provinces in Mozambique. This brings us to the need of localizing the issues and the solutions that emerge without neglecting the bigger movie [to avoid using a static picture metaphor]. If we call NGO and scientists enemies then we lose the ones that could be our allies, the same goes for donors, community members and state bureaucrats who could be in a form of tempered radicals, for example. Alliances are built around the idea of common interests, but these interests need always to be put under continuous and serious scrutiny: whose interests are we talking about, and from this very deep present entanglements Mozambican agents need to build localized narratives and actions that will lead to an imagined future without shying away from the deep present conditions.

A former colonial tea plantation next to Mount Mabu called Cha Madal now owned by the Indian capital Mozambique Holdings LTD, growing rubber trees in Lugela, photo by author

All agents in Mozambique must deal with what is thrown at them and make a living out of that, something I have come to call somewhere “radical bricoleurs”. This radicalness is unevenly distributed with the poor communities being the most radically vulnerable, since most of present battles take place in and have impacts on their homes, fields, cemeteries, bodies, minds, forests, mountains, rivers, seas, wind, etc. Then the solutions will have to have to be about increasing these communities’ capabilities without falling into the traps of capitalist sorcery or infernal alternatives: a true work of Magicians as Levi-Strauss would put it. This is the practical sense of decoloniality which needs to take place across scales that I am mostly willing to follow.