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SUMMARY:Mining\, waste and environmental thought on the Central African Co
 pperbelt\, 1950-2000' - Iva Peša\, University of Oxford
DTSTART:20190206T170000Z
DTEND:20190206T180000Z
UID:TALK119638@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:Since the beginning of the twentieth century the copper mining
  industry on the Zambian and Congolese Copperbelt has moved tonnes of eart
 h and has drastically impacted on the landscape. Yet although mining is on
 e of the dirtiest of all industries\, its role in transforming environment
 s remains underexposed. Notwithstanding profound changes to the air\, wate
 r and soils of the Copperbelt\, environmental aspects of copper mining hav
 e been largely overlooked until the early 1990s. This paper argues that in
 serting environmental considerations into the history of the Central Afric
 an Copperbelt is important and provides insights into broader socio-econom
 ic and political processes. Moreover\, by looking at Copperbelt environmen
 tal history from the 1950s onwards\, the sudden ‘discovery’ of polluti
 on in the 1990s can be contextualised as a local and (inter)national pheno
 menon. Based on archival research and oral history\, this paper provides a
 n overview of environmental consciousness as it was expressed on the Zambi
 an and Congolese Copperbelt from the 1950s until the late 1990s.\n\n      
          Because mining companies\, governments and even residents rarely 
 reflected upon the impact of copper mining on the environment\, creative a
 pproaches have to be adopted to make the environmental history of the Copp
 erbelt visible. Apart from reading archival sources closely\, medical serv
 ices and forestry can provide ways to tackle environmental knowledge produ
 ction on the Copperbelt. Why\, for example\, was charcoal burning denounce
 d\, whereas the large-scale felling of trees for the copper industry was c
 onsidered unproblematic? Government officials complained about subsistence
  agriculture and its contribution to soil erosion\, but they did not even 
 mention the tailings that mines discharged into rivers. By looking at such
  issues it is revealed that mining companies\, government officials and lo
 cal residents were acutely aware of the adverse environmental impacts of c
 opper mining. These negative impacts were\, however\, systematically downp
 layed. This paper seeks to problematise the silencing of the environmental
  impacts of copper mining on the Central African Copperbelt.\n\nIva Peša 
 is a Research Associate in environmental history at the University of Oxfo
 rd. Within the ERC funded 'Comparing the Copperbelt' project\, led by Prof
 . Miles Larmer\, she conducts research on the environmental history of the
  Zambian and Congolese Copperbelt from 1950-2000. She obtained her PhD at 
 Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2014 on the social history of Mwin
 ilunga District in Zambia. Iva's publications include three edited volumes
  (Magnifying Perspectives\, 2017) and several articles\, she is the editor
  of the open-accessSouthern African Journal of Policy and Development.   
LOCATION:Seminar Room SG2\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambri
 dge CB3 9DT
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