Africa's future environment - concepts of appropriation and conservation of nature

Funding: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Director: Michael Hauhs (Ökologische Modellbildung); Georg Klute (Ethnologie); Detlef Müller-Mahn (Bevölkerungs- und Sozialgeographie)

Outline:

We investigate the handling and impact of future visions on human-environment relationships in Africa. The possibilities and conditions of the future are linked to the particular environments of societies. We therefore expect fundamental differences between future visions within Africa and in the African diaspora. The interdisciplinary research design focuses on new instruments of ecological modelling with which the persistent gap between natural and cultural sciences can be bridged.

Our investigations are part of the BMBF project of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth "Zukunft Afrika: Vionen im Umbruch” (Future Africa: Visions in Upheaval), which can be summarised as follows:

The unifying idea of the project "Zukunft Africa" focuses on the dimension of time and thus transcends the much-criticized spatial fixation of regional studies. This perspective requires a link to be drawn between regional science and systematic disciplines.