Harnessing Folk Media for Effective Environmental Communication: The Case of Biomass Burning in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Fossil fuel burning is becoming a serious threat to the human and physical environments globally, not least in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, extensive swathes of savannah grasslands in the region, persistent dependence on primary resources, dependence on biomass as a primary source of energy and poor land use patterns expose the region to fossil fuel burning, with devastating effects on the human and physical environment. Studies have shown that there is extensive biomass degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 1.7 million km2, which constitutes about 17% of land area burning annually [Makundi in Mitigation options in forestry, land-use change and biomass burning in Africa. 1]. However, solutions to address this problem remain elusive, partly due to the lack of effective environmental communication campaigns. Existing intervention strategies have been premised on discredited communication paradigms that glorify ‘big media’ while neglecting indigenous and ‘small media’ which address complex environmental issues in a way that resonates with the African people’s lived experiences. Using two elements of ‘small media’, namely folk music and folk theatre as illustrative examples, this chapter explores the integration of small media and mainstream media to create awareness about the destructive effects of biomass burning on the physical and human environment in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter argues that folk media can be incorporated into existing public communication interventions to address environmental problems such as biomass burning because they are anchored in the cultural milieu of indigenous African communities and their historical locus and cosmos.