Great African Reads discussion

Thanks to Wim for starting the discussion on this quarter's nonfiction read on climate change in Africa. Go ahead and choose the book that interests you and is accessible from the top two tied in our poll:
- Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence
- Climate Change and Human Development


I read Tropic of Chaos a few years back and really appreciated it: urgent, big, and-- based on hindsight-- horribly prescient. Here is my review. At the end of my review I recommended, "If you can't get the book, it's worth trying to read the first few chapters online (not quite enough is excerpted here) or listening to some interviews (maybe this, this, or this)."

I've been having trouble accessing and finding time to read books lately, so I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to read Climate Change and Human Development, but I'm going to try! :D

A friend of mine has been researching the intersections of climate change, conflict, and gender around Lake Chad and her analysis and recommendations may be a good supplement to these books.

Any other good reads and other resources to share?

I read Tropics of Chaos in 2014 when I was getting into synthesizing political economy with environmental issues, indeed drawn to the title and to the fact that the author's father Michael Parenti is a legend in US anti-imperialism (here's a brief snippet lecturing on the Cuban Revolution, during the Reagan era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npkee...)

This book's message gets into a central point of political ecology (Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction), in seeing beyond "natural" disasters to find the social power relations prior/during/after. A similar and searing application of this is in Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (which references Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change). My background is in political economy, so I'd like to improve my literacy of related physical sciences to better engage with this type of analysis.

Of course, the question of "what is to be done" arises, and given the political nature of the analysis we recognize the limitations of technocratic "fixes". The author (from memory) argues that climate change is so dire that we need to focus on it immediately without waiting for systemic political economic change, and while we obviously need many levels of change (including direct temporary relief work) I found the constructive part of the book to be (as usual) lacking. Clearly there needs to be immediate targeted relief work, while long-term systemic change is needed to address the magnitude of not just climate change but the other threats to the Earth Systems and all the other social issues (they are all interrelated to varying degrees).

I finally started reading Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Thanks for your useful comments Tinea and Kevin. This really seems hugely important, even more today than it was at the time of writing (10 years ago).

I started Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence yesterday. It is such an important topic. I deal with some of it in my work, but this book seems to give a much wider perspective on the matter.

I am starting on Climate Change and Human Development today.

I know we are looking at climate change in Africa, but I found this article on migration in the USA as a result of climate change very interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...

It refers to the fact that insurers are starting to decline to insure in high risk areas. We have seen this in agricultural crop insurance in South Africa over the past decade. South Africa is one of very few countries where crop insurance is not subsidized at all and it is very expensive. Given the droughts since 2006, re-insurers have been less and less willing to provide capacity and certain areas are no longer able to get crop insurance for drought at all. In some places, it is available but very expensive (up to 20% of a farmer's total production cost) and only for farmers who have a track record with the insurers.

Thank you for sharing this Carolien, interesting article. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence deals a lot with climate migration, especially to and within the USA.

I just finished the book and am very happy having discovered it thanks to the group. To me, it was an eyeopening read. Especially how it connects poverty, capitalims, Cold War or neocolonial politics and climate change and give glimpses of how this catastrophic convergence of factors devastates societies in Africa and beyond. You can read my review here

Wim, I agree that it is very good at linking all these elements of poverty, capitalism, politics, etc. I have dealt with climate change as a topic in quite a bit of my work and studies, but the political angle was new and interesting to me.