Towards a New Economic/Climate Governance Framework for Africa on the Road to Zero

Mainstream intellectuals prioritize sustainable development, the green economy, and, more recently, the low-carbon and climate-resilient economy. However, low-carbon development is another justification for reorienting our economic activities along an environmentally favourable path, for better or worse. The paradigm provides the institutional structure for the eco-effective socialization of nature within national economies. A portion of the concept's function concentrates on decarbonization, while another ensures that climate risks do not disrupt the development trajectory of the global economy. This raises the question of whether the conception of a global strategy for mitigating the pandemic of climate risks substantially contributes to its reduction. Can the international community create a suitable arsenal to combat this threat without destroying the environment? Can Africa liberate itself from blueprints that routinely regulate nature?

This is the starting point for discovering a path to a carbon-neutral Africa. From the outset, it is essential to observe that answering these questions is not as simple as identifying a single party or issue as the sole offender. It is not about the presence or absence of these forces, but rather the degree to which one aligns or re-aligns the instrument to compensate for any actual or imagined deficiency in the system. However, as its supporters have weakened the power of its radical agenda, the appeal of the liberal market economic rationalization agenda as a driving force for political participation has diminished. Sadly, this issue diminished its capacity to effect the desired social change. Given this, ecological concerns no longer constitute a space for political contestation; rather, market liberals have attached the environmental problem to their 'crisis management' functions and logic, rendering ecologism claims superfluous to modern politics.

Essentially, it is an additional instrument available to those who deploy it. Worrisomely, they have also appropriated the energy crisis, but the globalization trend has not substantially altered the environmental crisis. In reality, it is evidence of the energy crisis. This is additional evidence of "post-ecological politics," in which eco-politics has become so corrupted that it is no longer a potent paradigmatic critique of modern industrial capitalism. Given the escalation of climate risks, one might assume that the primary abstraction should encompass all constraints on humanity, with the ensuing eco-politics realigned to eliminate all of these burdens. In contrast, the eco-politics surrounding the rationalization of nature have degraded it to the point where it cannot serve as a neutral framework for an alternative normative and ethical framework for organizing human societies or for transformative practice. Thus, the environmental crisis is merely one of many problems that can be mitigated by applying market liberal theories.

Appropriation of Nature's Rationalization

The market liberals' adoption of a low-carbon economy is a work in progress. In addition to portending grave environmental peril, the intervention of market capitalists has grave implications for an alternative normative framework. On the other side of this divide, one would expect an alternative concept to sustainable development to have been conceptualized. It also embodies more of the market hypothesis, which is intriguing. In actuality, the project of constructing ecological theory as an ideology providing a consistent basis for the ecological reorganization of society has not only failed on a theoretical and political level but is also obsolete. To follow this argument to its logical conclusion, it would appear that the political demands of ecology have been translated into the language and mechanisms of the system it seeks to dethrone, thereby unwittingly consolidating its hegemonic influence. As a consequence, we are entering an era of uncharted research in the transition to a new ecological sustainability argument, which complicates our current efforts to build a low-carbon economy. Low-carbon may be a complex endeavour with multiple issues. Not only are these issues related to how our low-carbon analysis is conceptualized, but they also have distinct socioeconomic repercussions for the affected states.

The Future Course of Economic Rationalization

Due to the continent's high carbon consumption, the path to economic development in Africa is paved with the depletion of nature. In the majority of these societies, it is argued that they should be allowed to profit from their vast natural resources. Taking their argument to its logical conclusion, nature is nothing more than a commodity used to generate the wealth required to transform the host communities. Importantly, no state has ever developed without incurring expenses. In conjunction with this, manifestations of climate change take a considerable amount of time to manifest, but these communities now embrace them as an acceptable ecological reality. It is paradoxical that the impressive development of Africa in the 1990s, which was fueled by the depletion of its natural resources, is coming to a catastrophic end. The deterioration of rural communities as a result of climate change is a major factor in this abrupt decline. Due to the unpredictability of climate risks, research on Africa's problems must account for these declines' irreversibility. The focus of research should be on preserving the health of nature, not on reviving or rebranding another agenda with a desirable characteristic. When environmental research focuses on other goals, it not only lubricates the wheels of depletion but also causes additional hardship in the form of food and agroecological degradation.

By prioritizing depletion, it is plausible to assume that scarcity will develop in these communities, and where there is an allocation crisis, the misallocation of scarce resources will lead to conflict and further marginalization. I am not proposing that these works have lost their critical perspective or heuristic edge. This is, however, accurate. Certainly, it reiterates the argument that such abstraction is part of the eco-colonial and historical nature appropriation processes. The mechanism utilized for such dominance has a firm grasp on the frameworks and themes used to describe the epoch-spanning subordination of nature to humans. The fundamental issue is not the desire to promulgate an indefinite appropriation doctrine, but rather the incapacity of such an approach to establish a level playing field for managing the current human-nature divide.

Despite the optimism surrounding a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy, other sectors (other than the extractive industry) have stagnated, resulting in a rapid reversal of growth. Due to climate change, deteriorating health prospects, ubiquitous malnutrition, and severe unemployment, the quality of life for many has declined. Inconsistent fiscal policies led to deflation and a devalued currency while rising insecurity exacerbated the crisis and undermined holistic integration. The primary cause is institutional deficiencies stemming from the neo-patrimonial character of the state. Despite the fact that advancements in market principles have accelerated the creation of wealth for a select few, widespread poverty continues to undermine the modest gains of economic growth.

Conclusion

The challenge for African administrations is to redirect the nation's floundering economy towards sustained growth. However, long-term emancipation is not feasible given their current erratic economic policy. If these governments are able to promote growth through manufacturing, education, agriculture, entertainment, innovation, and technology, the enigmatic economic growth fantasy that has eluded previous administrations will be realized. For socially inclusive growth, we advocate marrying Thailand's Sufficiency Economy with Africa's biocommunitarian principles. Therefore, the fraudulent coalition of unlikely bedfellows that characterized Africa's climate governance must be disbanded. When an international initiative is regarded as a means to an end, the pursuit of global net-zero emissions is derailed before it begins. The current emphasis on preserving ecological integrity by conducting experiments in the backyards of others to address contemporary climate risks externalizes the costs of maintaining their consumer societies' contentment.

We assert, on a more ebullient and optimistic note, that the prospect of a sufficiency economy also aligns with the SDGs' objectives. Therefore, it is a step in the right direction. Consequently, if Africa implements a sufficiency economy, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is a distinct possibility. Similar to Thailand's Sufficiency Economy, achieving a stable environment necessitates a fundamental shift and reorganization of policies aimed at environmental sustainability. This is a departure from the current destructive entropic dynamics and a fresh perspective on expansion. A new method of thinking aimed at bridging the divide between technology and natural resources. To achieve this goal, policies should promote agroecological values while reorganizing the money-driven economic system of humanity.