Desertification Countermappings: Internationalism, Environmentalism, and Anticipating Terror

Keywords: Deserts, Environmental Change, African/Diaspora, Militarism, Expertise
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

Juxtaposing a 1985 international conference on desertification at Howard University (USA) with United States government agencies’ increased attention to the “global threat” of desertification and environmental insecurity during the same era, this paper traces the impact of environmental/military surveillance on the production of expert knowledge about arid environments. The 1985 “International Symposium on Drought and Desertification” brought together activists, journalists, scientists, African heads of state and members of the Congressional Black Caucus to strategize ways to build internationalist solidarity in response to recursive droughts and food crises in West and East Africa. Conference participants challenged conventional development paradigms arguing against prevailing “overpopulation” discourses (Hartmann 1998; Sasser 2018). Instead, they advanced other ideas about arid and semi-arid environments in hopes of building sustainable agricultural systems for communities across the African continent. Yet, at the same time, US intelligence and defense agencies began to frame drought and other environmental disturbances in Africa as part of, what Jacob Hamblin (2013) describes as, a rising “catastrophic environmentalism,” security problems to be managed and acted upon. Thus, this paper raises a broader set of questions about global security projects and environmental change in drylands, while also investigating how alternate counter publics—Black/African diasporic activists assembled at Howard—sought to make sense of these changes in ways that challenged normative ideas about African spaces.