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Decolonial Futures Decolonial Futures

Emancipatory Potential of the Right to a Healthy Environment: Examining the Boegoebaai Port Project's Impact on Indigenous Fishing Communities

Linda Musariri, Eileen Moyer, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh

This collaborative research project, undertaken by the Faculty of Social Behavioural Sciences and the Faculty of Law, will conduct a preliminary study on the case of the Boegoebaai Port Project focusing on climate justice and the right to a healthy environment. The Boegoebaai Project will develop a large-scale port and green hydrogen production facility in South Africa’s Northern Cape. However, this initiative threatens to displace indigenous Nama communities in the area, potentially leading to the loss of traditional lands and fishing grounds, cultural practices, and livelihoods.

Located near the Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape – a UNESCO world heritage site that is communally owned and managed by Nama peoples – the Boegoebaai Project risks reproducing (neo)colonial practices of resource extraction. The port project will fundamentally alter indigenous ways of life and drain already scarce freshwater sources for hydrogen production.  

Dutch companies Climate Fund Managers and Invest International are involved in the project, which is actively promoted by the Dutch government. The hydrogen produced is primarily intended for export to Europe via the Port of Rotterdam.  

Even though it is marketed as a critical step toward green energy transitions for both Europe and South Africa, the project exemplifies an enduring pattern of European powers and companies exploiting the peoples and resources of Africa, with little regard for long-term social and environmental consequences. 

Linda Musariri is an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Anthropology Department. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam. Her current research explores the unequal distribution of costs and benefits in the production and consumption of ‘carbon-free’ technologies which disproportionately affect the global south.  

Eileen Moyer is a Professor in the Anthropology of Ecology, Health and Climate Change and chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. Moyer’s research examines the relationship between ecological well-being, health and climate change.  

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh is an Associate Professor of Sustainability Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam. Margaretha’s research builds on more than fifteen years of involvement in legal processes related to sustainable development and human rights. Amongst other things, she has acted as a legal adviser to governments at international climate change negotiations, represented non-governmental organisations at the UN Human Rights Council, and advised the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the nexus between climate change and human rights.