Ecospiritual Practices in African Contexts - Power Dynamics, Biocultural Change and Integrated Landscape Management

This book argues that African spiritual traditions, philosophies, and everyday practices offer crucial, yet often overlooked, perspectives for rethinking global sustainability policies. Premised on the understanding that spirituality is fundamentally interwoven with the ecological world, it outlines an ecospiritual relational worldview where rivers, mountains, and forests are beings with which humans share an interdependent existence. This perspective directly challenges dominant Euroamerican narratives.

This collection intervenes directly in scholarly debates surrounding Indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) and its politicization. It proposes a scholarly appreciation of ecospiritual practices as an interpretive framework through which to understand the multiplicity of ways African communities experience, interpret, and relate with landscapes. It calls for an urgent shift to reimagine ecological governance from within African ontologies.