网易体育 WESAF
"WESAF aims to advance research capacity amongst African academics and higher educational institutions whilst grappling with the critical issues of sustainable development in their fields of interest. This will enhance a more interdisciplinary approach to tackling the key threats to sustainable development in Africa and beyond."
Globally we face two interrelated challenges: achieving a just and inclusive society secure in dignified employment with affordable access to meaningful education and high-quality healthcare whilst simultaneously ensuring planetary health through environmental sustainability. In Africa these twin imperatives are complicated in distinct ways. The continent’s very young and growing population provides significant opportunities for economic growth, but these must be pursued within the environmental frameworks signalled in the global community’s commitment to sustainable development. Any conceptualisation of sustainability must therefore grapple with the inequities and complexities embedded in the geopolitical, social and environmental realities of our modern world. WESAF’s understanding of sustainability is thus anchored in a theoretical framework that recognises that sustainable development must be socially just while respecting environmental limits.
Further to enable a sustainable future in Africa, it is essential to explore and promote an African-driven sustainability agenda as part of collaborative decision-making processes, which include local communities and knowledge. This will ensure that solutions and programmes aimed at sustainable development are not dominated by the agenda of the Global North. Rather just transitions in the Global South should respond to local needs and resource availability, such as for agriculture, green energy, and infrastructure. This requires indigenous understandings and management of a range of complex, interconnected challenges in the development of suitable solutions that are sensitive to both the vulnerabilities of the countries of the Global South, and their long histories of resilience in the face of protracted adversity.