By Gcwalisile Khanyile for IOL News.

Indigenous people are at the receiving end of epistemic violence and climate calamities, and their knowledge is looked down upon, not regarded as scientific. 

These are some of the concerns voiced by experts during a recent webinar titled ‘Decolonising Climate Risk Scholarship from the Global North to Africa’ hosted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in collaboration with Midlands State University, University of Venda, and partners in Namibia.

Epistemic violence is described as systemic silencing, delegitimisation, or overwriting of particular knowledges, ways of knowing, or intellectual frameworks by dominant ones, often in colonial and power-imbalanced contexts.

Dr Mokhantšo Makoae, research director at HSRC, said that decolonising climate risk from the Global North to Africa is important considering how environments are consistently being disrupted by various factors. She said the climate crisis coincides with wars taking place in different parts of the world, and also co-exists with declines in economic growth, and prosperity is under threat.

Read the full story on the IOL website.

WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE:

This webinar is one of a few events in the lead-up to the Climate Futures African Conference 2025, to be held in Windhoek, Namibia in October. Learn more about the conference.