Hello listeners, welcome to the Culture and Climate Nexus.
This episode explores the contemporary Egyptian Nubian experience with climate change and
how it influenced our cultural life and social dynamics.
Their story tells the tale of adaptation, resilience, and the intricate dance between
human cultures and their environments.
My name is Misimi Owolabi and I'm this podcast's host.
Imagine standing on the banks of the Nile River where the water shimmers under the blazing
sun and the land stretches far beyond the eyes.
Here you can feel the weight of history and life that's flowed for thousands of years.
This is the home of the Egyptian Nubians.
The Egyptian Nubians are renowned for their cultural heritage, social structures, and
their deep ties to the Nile River.
Unfortunately, in recent years, the effects of climate change has posed significant challenges
to their livelihoods and traditions.
Their experience contains adaptations and resilience as they strive to preserve their
cultural identity and sustain their way of life.
I am thrilled to introduce the guests for this podcast.
A historian who has done research in Africa, including Ethiopia, Southern Africa, Senegal,
and Ghana.
He participated in many local community projects focusing on how these communities have adjusted
to their natural environment and how they approach their challenges.
Please welcome Professor James McCann.
Hello Professor McCann and welcome as guests on the Climate and Culture Nexus.
I emailed Professor McCann after a history teacher recommended him to me and looked over
his works, including the Greenland, Brownland, Blackland, and Environmental History of Africa.
During his research, he has physically seen how people have adapted to their surroundings
and how migration and trade have shaped their communities.
He also has seen how the very landscapes result in diverse interpretations of the natural
world and responses to climate change.
So this podcast will first focus on the Egyptian-Nubians' historic context and the change he has
observed.
We will then examine the importance of the Nile River, specifically its cultural importance,
and we will dive into how colonialism and environmental changes affect the Nile and
Nile role, availability of water in the region.
We will then discuss how gender dynamics have been ultra-effective as well as occupational
dynamics.
We will then look at the Egyptian-Newbians' identities and how it evolved to do climate
change in terms of culture, occupation, and class.
We will then discuss how Egyptian-Newbians perceive climate change in their local adaptation
efforts.
Professor McCann will first talk a little about himself.
I have been interested in African studies, I am a historian, I am a historian of the
way people live their lives over time.
The variety of places I have been to do work in Africa takes me to the various places in
Ethiopia, which is so incredibly diverse.
But also in Southern Africa, where I have participated in projects in local communities,
why do they grow certain crops, how do they adjust to changing their national environment,
including things like the European-Expressive-Nitrogen Climate, and then how do these climates
interact with the way people live their lives and approach to challenges they face, of course,
to men's challenges.
I have also worked in West Africa, in Senegal, in Ghana, part of the both sides of the U,
that there is a chapter in the Bidderville and Caledon, and Ghana is a very different
setting for how people organize their economic lives.
I am also the book and deed of a conference in Finland on Afragots, the panels on Africa,
and arguing that connection or environmental history and environmental issues is often
connected very much to the humanities.
Other people express their feelings about their world.
What that has to do with painting, poetry, and literature, and language, all those things
reflect the way people think about their lives and the environments part of that.
And I always argue that it's those factors of humanities, how people express themselves
that really let others understand more fully what's likely to be the outcome of the terms
of the way they speak, and reflect their natural world, the environment, including climate.
As you can see, Professor McCann has a rich engagement with African studies.
He explores the interplay between environmental factors, cultural dynamics, human experiences,
and the diverse spherics in these regions.
So what differences have you observed, Professor McCann?
If it's one of the points that I would like to see is that the idea of Africa being one
place, Africa has been a different environment for its ecologies, and those are reflected
in the genocidal cultures of where do you find yourself, where people find themselves,
how they trade with how they roll with the world of the kingdom and the world of the
kingdom and the world of the kingdom.
And these are many, many different examples.
Africa is not one physical place, but there's so many varieties of people that interpret
and live in their natural world.
And how the adjavas took climate change is part of that.
Piki for pointing that out, Professor McCann, is essential to be aware that Africa has 54
countries and multiple cultures and heritages within each one.
A unique feature of Egypt that is very important to Egyptian Nubian is the Nile River.
As I discussed in the introduction episode of this podcast, the Carnegie Museum of Natural
History article outlines how the Nile is culturally significant because it provides
water and salt, lay for agriculture, means of transportation and religious significance.
One of my major focus in my research is the Kermai Kroeg project, it's about the Nile.
And of course the Nile begins in Ethiopia, and come 84% of the water that reaches Cairo
comes out of Ethiopia, doesn't come out of East Africa.
Now there's many people who misunderstand that, in fact, let me show you.
How has it shaped the lives of the Egyptian Nubians or Ethiopians since that is what you
focus on?
Well, I think the adjavas culturally, the name for the Blue Nile, we have two Niles,
the Blue Nile and the White Nile.
The Blue Nile is the one that provides most of the water and it comes during the rainy
season in Ethiopia and then declines a little bit, but still is the major source of water
that reaches.
And it carries the soil with it, and so the name for the Blue Nile in Ethiopia is Abai.
This is a relationship to my father.
And it is a way of people relating to those waters of the Nile are symbolically very important
for ritual religious activities.
So for example, the very place where the Nile comes out of the ground, stood there on the
very spring, and that's where there were ritual sacrifices of animals to create the
profiteous relationships with the deity.
So it's a predominantly Christian area.
So they are recognizing the importance of water as something that gives holiness, that
gives humanity to humans who derive their livelihood from it.
And so that my work has been in the physical, the actual place where the Nile emerges from
the ground.
Symbolically the travelers who have come over the many, many centuries to that place
include Portuguese, Scots, English, of course many of the different Ethiopians people who
know that place.
They recognize that that place is symbolic.
The water, of course, is a small amount of the
symbolic of what makes them human, what makes them have a relationship to their deity.
That is a major part of the meaning of the water, not just the physical water, but the
symbolic meaning of the water is important.
And as you move down the Nile from the into Sudan, the same kind of effects of people
recognize this as the heartbeat of their economic and social culture.
And going into Egypt, even though legends change, people change, and Nubians are different
as people in the Tharo.
Nubians are different than most of the people of Sudan who live along the banks of the Nile.
Nonetheless, they all have some kind of meanings that water, in their life or religion, of
poetry, of representation of what does water mean, the meanings of the water.
After highlighting the deep cultural and symbolic significance of the Nile, more specifically,
the Blue Nile branch, which shows how important a water is to people in Ethiopia and the Egyptian
Nubians.
It really is not just about the physical water.
It's culturally significant because of how it connects to history, tradition, and spirituality.
It shapes the way of life for many people and even connects various cultures along the
banks.
What other impacts and effects has climate change had on the Egyptian Nubians?
Well, it's the connection, the water flowing from East Africa, both from the White Nile
and the Blue Nile, coming into what's within Nubia.
That has always been connected by, for example, the Oxamide Empire in Ethiopia controlled at
one point that part of southern Egypt in the Nubia area.
Just as the Egyptian civilization, of course, was a major, major part of the world culture,
and they were always deriving, they understood that the Nile was the source of things that
are livelihoods.
The whole being came from the Nile because beyond the banks of the Nile, Egypt and northern
Sudan, our very, their life comes from the water.
What particularly strikes me is how these relate heavily to the global challenges today, such
as climate change.
Unfortunately, these events make water more scarce for some groups due to the drought.
These societies allow us to reflect on the understanding of water resource management.
So, for, if we take southern Egypt, it's very much organized around the presence of water
that's been managed by local populations for how do you cultivate crops, which crops
do you cultivate, how do you manage to relate your political system to the fact that the
Nile is something that changes over time, will go long term, but also changes year to
year.
Seasonality, if you're able to look at section, I strangle you, that chapter, it's about
seasons, it's about changes over time in the amount of water available, what's to
be available through rainfall, or through the movement of the river.
Basically, it doesn't bring in Cairo.
Cairo depends only primarily on the movement of the water from the Ethiopian islands from
East Africa into Egypt and eventually into the Mediterranean, although the water now
in these days does not really ever reach the Mediterranean.
So the water is a critical issue for Egypt, it's just having tough times now.
The effects of it right now, the immigration and of how do you negotiate to make sure that
your economy is actually access to the water that's the foundation of the digital economy.
I want to note that climate change has also had other cultural effects on the Egyptian
Nubians.
Some of these include displacement of the Egyptian Nubians through the rising sea levels
or changes in rainfall patterns, due to climate change, highlighted by ammonia recede.
In the frontline article, The Angel of the Nile are Dying, the author discusses how there
is displacement due to climate change.
The article highlights how hardships exacerbated by issues such as colonialism and poverty
have made life much more difficult for the Egyptian Nubians.
These factors include agriculture, water scarcity, and extreme weather.
Speaking of colonialism, how does that affect the Egyptian Nubians and exacerbate the climate
crisis there?
Well, Europeans were always concerned about the Nile as a place that, because Egypt was
geographically really important for a long, long period of time, when Napoleon was there,
the British eventually were competing with the French.
There were different kind of accommodations that Egypt made to become an event in the
time dominium that they jointly ruled with the local Egyptian government and the British
were the ones on top of that situation, because the British cared very much about how they
would keep access to the water, because that was the heartbeat of such a geographically
important area, which we know is Egypt.
So colonialism, Egypt has a different kind of colonial history than other parts of Africa.
Sudan was also part of Egypt, if you had to say itself, historically into Sudan to control
the water and also to control the population.
The relationships between Egypt, especially southern Egypt, but also in Sudan, had to
do with access to the water, but also the importation of people in the form of those
people, here the slaves out of Sudan into Egypt and also into the Mediterranean world.
And that was part of that colonial heritage of Egypt, which the complicated complicating
compared to the rest of Africa were not direct control with the French, with the Italians,
with the British.
Egypt had a condominium relationship where local leadership derives from the Mediterranean
world, Mahalili, not the boxer, but for Bahmali, the ruler, he was a Mamluk.
A Mamluk is the one who had descended from slaves in the court in Egypt, and he's the
one who expanded the Egyptian influence over Manuvia and into East Africa, when Egypt was
fundamentally an important player in that world.
We're then also involved in fending itself into both the coastline of Ethiopia, the Red
Sea, and into Sudan.
So it's a complicated colonial situation.
It was eventually the British dominated by the time of the 20th century, and the British
were the key force there.
And then Egyptian nationalism came to play as they fought against the British of the
show, but the Zambiaxer came into power, connected to the states in Egypt.
It's a complicated situation, but the East was part and parcel of that, both participating
in and being subjected to effective colonization.
Yeah, it's fascinating how colonial powers, such as the French and the British, but over
Egypt's resources specifically acted to denial.
This demonstrates how colonialism often involved exploiting natural resources like water to
serve their own interests.
In an interview I conducted with Andrew Smith, a researcher focusing on Native American
populations in Arizona and Mexico, it was revealed that indigenous communities perceived
climate change as a manifestation of colonization.
Smith's research further suggests that colonization exacerbates the impact of climate change on
these communities.
By disrupting their traditional ways of life, colonization left indigenous communities vulnerable
to climate change environmental degradation.
This concept could also shed light on the impact of colonization and climate change
on marginalized populations worldwide.
The Nubian people have also faced historical displacement exploitation.
Therefore, there may be some understanding of historical justice and struggle for cultural
resilience there.
While indigenous communities view climate change very negatively as an ongoing colonization,
it is also important to illustrate these interconnected dynamics.
An example of this is the Aswan dams.
For those unfamiliar with these two dams, the low dam, the first one, was created during
the British colonial era in the Egyptian city of Aswan.
The second took shape as the high dam in the 1960s.
These dams generated electricity for hydropower, flood, control, and irrigation in bar supply
management.
However, according to an article, how Egypt's Aswan dam washed away Nubian heritage, one
of the most significant consequences of the high dam specifically was the displacement
of Egyptian Nubians peoples who inhabited the Nile Valley.
The construction of dams like the Aswan high dam intended to initially address water management
challenges in a region where water fluctuates significantly.
However, climate change intensifies the challenges causing these dams' disruptions to worsen.
Ken Yeo, Professor McCann, explained more about how these events surrounding the Aswan
dam influenced Egyptian Nubians' vulnerability to climate change.
Well, climate change is, as the map I first sent you, can you get that?
Yes.
If you look at that map, I took map that predicts rainfall availability, water availability
for Africa as we look into the future.
And the two places you see that have the brown markings are the, one is the Zamezi and the
other one is, this is where the water comes from, because it gets to Egypt.
And so the prediction from those, you do in projections is that water is going to be a
very, very key declining resource.
So the expectations that you see of building your own dam that the Egyptians are not happy
about, but it's going to be, the water is going to be in very short, very scarce supply.
That's the big deal.
Water is a fundamental issue through all of these questions about political power, about
poor access to water to grow their crops, to be able to move to trade.
All of these things are in significance under significant threat by climate change.
And the prediction, the best predictions we have is that it's going to be even more
of a scarce resource.
It's crucial to spotlight their critical intersection between climate change and political dynamics.
The prediction of declining water availability in regions like Ethiopia and Egypt increases
geopolitical tensions over water resources.
Competition for water supplies sometimes causes alliances or conflicts to secure access to
water for agriculture and industry, exacerbating existing power imbalances and stability in
the region.
These can alter how people interact with their environment and even see themselves.
Can you speak, please, on how climate change alters how Egyptian Nubians view their cultural
identities?
That was hard for me because I've not worked in Nubia directly.
I work in Sudan.
Sudan is a couple of different cultures and geographies.
But I think it's a fair question to ask if we were designing research for you to do.
You'd be to go to Nubia and ask that very, very question.
It's a cheap question, how are they relating the changing conditions of the water availability?
Because they depend upon the water.
But once you leave the admitted area and you fly over, the many, many times I float over
the Nile, going over Egypt into Ethiopia, you see the river is a green stripe.
Did you look down the windows of the plane flying over?
And outside of that admitted area of the Nile, it's brown.
The Nile itself is what gives life.
And beyond that, you have to move the water or find access to some way of having the livelihood
beyond the river itself.
And so, of course, this affects the Nubians.
It affects everyone who lives on the Nile.
The key source of life, it is declining.
The water, as I said, no longer flow into the Mediterranean from Egypt.
It's all taken up by Egypt and Sudan.
The Ethiopian now is going to do new damage to store that water.
They found us that water is in the agriculture.
But we'll see that how much water will be able to be released from that, as down in
the Ethiopia.
So it's the big political issue of the day.
People are being engaged in how do we negotiate this politically so that people have access
to that water.
But the Ethiopian controls it.
The water comes off the Ethiopian islands.
This is very intriguing.
The Nile has long been a central part of the Egyptian Nubians' lives and culture.
But climate change is clearly disrupting that.
For example, the way the Nile changes colors and a dwindling water flow demonstrates its
observations.
So, in a sense, the Egyptian Nubians' cultural identities are being challenged, which forces
a renegotiation of their relationship with the long river.
Moreover, other African groups are facing something similar.
Just as Ethiopia, which Professor McCann has done deep research on, asserts control over
waters, flow in their highlands, altering dynamics of the Nile, the Egyptian Nubians also deal
with concerns about the river.
The Egyptian Nubians see themselves at the forefront of discussions preserving their
cultural heritage and the face of climate change.
These cultural changes also expand into social dynamics like gender and occupation.
Modern U. Professor McCann speaks to how gender dynamics have been affected by climate change
and how it has affected Egyptian Nubians' view on their cultural identities.
Well, that matters the key question.
It's not a change you could go to.
Any of these places on the Nile asks those questions.
Those are some of the questions I ask when I'm in Ethiopia again.
It's the place where the Nile comes out of the ground.
Of course, the water comes from many different places to follow me to.
The one place, symbolically, is about, you can ask questions about gender.
How do women relate to water in that setting compared to men?
What's the way?
It's different for each of the societies in which you move down the Nile from the highlands
into Sudan and into Egypt.
Each of those societies answers those questions in different ways.
Those are research questions to be explored, gender is an important issue, social class,
political relations, who really controls the symbolic as well as the physical meaning
of the Nile.
If you're from Trasimget, that's San.
San, there are no river systems.
Water comes from small sources of water for the Assad who are hunting and gathering people.
Who live in a presence of a major economic power of South Africa, which is economies
based on mining and the fact into a world economy.
The San are believed by the systems of control.
Their life is not based on a river.
Of course, you have to have water.
It's hunting and gathering as Nekedal livelihood rather than living next to a river where you
can in fact draw the water for agriculture and transport.
So it's very, very, very similar to the Nile versus hunting and gathering society.
That's the contrast I think that looks more.
Yes I agree.
Gender dynamics influence how women and men relate to water in other aspects of life and
in various along the Nile, not one size fits all, and it's expressed with many other factors.
As mentioned in the introductory episode, the source, national strategy from a mainstreaming
gender and climate change in Egypt implies gender dynamics can vary within a seeking
country.
Your perspective and the perspective of my source show how important it is to conduct
research to understand the intersectionality of gender and climate change.
This source, particularly national strategy from a streaming gender and climate change
in Egypt discusses how gender inequality and climate change are extremely linked.
For example, it discusses how women are often very abrupt of climate change due to gender
disparities in access to resources, education, finances, and decision making powers.
Although they're trying to increase the number of women in office, these issues worsen their
vulnerability to climate changes.
A quote that stood out to me is how they said, climate change is not gender neutral.
This suggests that climate change responses that must be kept in mind that the specific
needs of different people in ignoring these gender dynamics can worsen inequality and
undermine the effectiveness of interventions.
Another thing that's set out to me is how occupational dynamics have also been affected
for the Egyptian Newbians due to climate change.
For example, changes in precipitation patterns affect crop yields and availability of water
for irrigation, forcing the Egyptian Newbians to change their practices.
Some individuals seek alternative livelihoods, such as migrating to urban areas to find employment
that has less dependent on natural resources.
Where are your thoughts, Professor McCann?
Well, for example, Egypt was based upon the availability of water for agriculture on the
Nile itself.
In a very clever way, in the moving of the water from the river to the fields by the
technology developed, Egypt had this for centuries on centuries.
That's the Egypt that destroyed how to move the water from the river through their fields,
therefore able to feed on larger population.
It's clear how much Egypt's occupational dynamics have relied on the Nile throughout
the centuries.
However, recent technological advancements have significantly changed how Egyptians
interact with their environment.
In response to climate change, threats to Egyptian culture and heightened risks, there's a growing
emphasis on sustainable water management practices, including investment in irrigation
systems.
Adapting the climate change challenges the Egyptians on currently more innovative agricultural
technologies.
These methods like irrigation systems grow crops that can better withstand climate change.
Some Newbians are also exploring alternative methods beyond agricultural life, such as
eco-tourism initiatives.
Using both types of knowledge, traditional and modern, Egyptian Newbians are attempting
to preserve their cultural heritage while adapting to climate change.
Can you speak further on how Egyptian Newbians are fighting back against climate change and
resisting further?
Well, climate change is a much bigger process, determined by global issues.
But one of the key factors is how do you store water, how do you use and perceive water,
both for ritual purposes and for religion, and how do you baptize people?
How do you shorten these by use of water, so it has medicinal purposes and has lively
improvements in terms of food?
But what people are building with is the fact that they have to store the water, even though
that's done by reservoir for a dam.
But if you build a dam, what happens to the place where you're building the dam if it
was accessed to water?
I visited a site near, very, very near where the Nile comes out of the ground.
And we were doing work on malaria.
And so they let us come onto a place where they had built a dam.
The Egyptian government had built a dam for the international contribution to build up
this dam project, to store the water, and the guard on that land, he said, you can't
come in here.
But we have permission.
The manager of your project just gave us permission.
And he had his rifle there.
He said, no, no, you can't come in here.
And he said, well, please, we need to go.
We want to come in here to see how this is affecting where the Cedars will live and where
you have problems with malaria, et cetera.
So finally he let us in, and then we began talking to him.
And he said, you know, he said, I'm a guard here, this used to be my land.
And so he had to take a salary as a guard, a very low paying salary to be a guard on
this dam project, because his land was now covered with water.
Because they'd stored the water on his land, he lost his land.
And so he became our friend.
But his reason he was protecting it is because of his job as a guard.
But he had lost his land in the farmer because of the way the water was controlled, stored
behind the dam.
Because you all break health questions for the people who live there.
And if the government loses to him, no.
The government wants to produce electricity.
They want to produce agriculture by controlling the water.
Who gets access to that water?
Depends on where you can fit the relatives of the government.
So these are tough local issues.
I like that you highlight the challenges they face in combating, combating, and resisting
further consequences.
The focus is on water management and how it impacts local communities like the loss of
land, as well as political dynamics, and managing water resources.
The story of the dam illustrates how projects can lead to displacement.
His continued work at the dam site shows resistance or adaptation.
At the loss, he maintains his connection to his land and community.
Luju typically talks to you when you ask the best questions when you visit Africa.
Academics are local people.
For all of you above, but especially local people, I do inter-produse with people.
I did a project for Oxfam where it took me six hours by a UL to get to the place which
was affected by drought and by the famine.
I spent two months there interviewing farmers.
Farmers were both my neighbors there.
I was the bilmi outsider there.
I got malaria, by the way.
But interviewing people and saying, okay, how do you get access to the materials you
use for agriculture?
People became both people of interviewing and my friends.
So that kind of interaction, and of course I talk to academics too.
My friends in the Hottest Output, the capital, they interact with them all the time, even
by email now.
The farmers who were there, we were living together.
I was the only outsider there.
We had jokes, and they would come and play music in the evening.
I have a tape here of my friend, Bedru, and I fall asleep to him playing.
The instruments, we were talking about the difficulties of lighting in this area.
These people were and became my friends.
So those interactions, you were day to day, not just day to day, so of course you're asking
by observing them.
By observing them the way they cultivate their land, what they eat, what they prepare, and
relationship between men and women, old and young.
Those are things you can only observe by being there and living with people.
It's a wonderful thing to do, and you hold this.
It helps them as well.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights with me, Prashan McCann.
Before we end today's episode, please share any recommendations on books or resources
to read to learn more about this topic.
Again, those are very influential books in terms of African environments.
That's why I'm leading the Stanley Sims.
Allison Thindlend above the Arctic Circle, but there are 1,200 people from around the
world who are coming to this meeting.
But some of these other books here, so classic works of another pair of books, so works by
so many of them around direct issues about water, about fire bliss, but also especially
about agriculture, and what people do to make their livelihood work.
Thank you again for agreeing to have me interview you, Professor McCann.
You have very good insights on this topic.
I shared so many exciting ideas.