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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Globalised Images of Environmental Security in Africa
Author:Obi, CyrilISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:Review of African Political Economy
Volume:27
Issue:83
Period:March
Pages:47-62
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:images
global economy
environment
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
international relations
External links:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240008704432
http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4AB786757E96ACA7A06D
Abstract:Following the end of the Cold War, more attention is being paid to the implications of global interdependence. A globalized image has emerged of Africa as the greatest source of environmental threat to global security. It has become commonplace to label Africa as a site of overpopulation and violent ethnic or tribal wars, both of which lead to environmental degradation and conflict. Such analysis shifts the blame for environmental insecurity to Africa, leaving out the external economic agents that deepen the contradictions within the continent. Moreover, Africa is wrongly depicted as an undifferentiated whole. This article questions the construction and implications of distorted global images of the African threat to global insecurity. It critiques the conventional wisdom about the African environment and the linkages between environmental security and globalization and identifies the main themes of environmental security discourses as image and causality. What emerges from a critique of the image of a global environmental Armageddon in the works of Robert Kaplan and others is the fact that they ignore that Africa is both a historical construct and a product of a global political economy that is basically constructed against it and urges it to adapt to the global market. There is a clear case for deconstructing the globalized image of environmental security in Africa, which can best be assured within an equitable global economic and political system. Bibliogr., sum.
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