Humanity’s ecological challenges – from climate change and pollution to biodiversity loss – demand new ways of thinking. Ecology is fundamentally the study of organisms and their environments, addressing issues like global warming and species extinction.
CECTRRA’s 2027 Conference (Lomé, Togo) theme “Ecology, Time, and Concepts: African, Global, and Multidisciplinary Understandings” invites interdisciplinary papers and reflections on how our concepts and our understanding of time shape ecological knowledge. For example, there is the view that treating time as a fixed linear container is limiting, and that conceiving time as produced, constructed, maintained, lived and more than humans have more promising consequences for environmental humanism. In other words, by rethinking temporality and the categories we use (such as ecosystem, sustainability, Anthropocene, etc.), we may discover new insights into environmental problems and solutions.
Time itself is a culturally shaped concept. Many African traditions tie time to natural rhythms. This perspective suggests how local environments and histories influence societies’ past, present or future, and suggest that multiple temporalities (e.g. ancestral time, cyclical time, evolutionary time) coexist. Exploring such plural temporalities can deepen our understanding of ecological processes; from indigenous farming calendars and seasonal rituals to long-term geological changes; and challenge assumptions of one universal timeline.
Equally important are the concepts we bring to ecology. Ecology and environmental studies use frameworks (ecosystems, trophic webs, niche, resilience, etc.) that carry hidden assumptions. New concepts like the Anthropocene; a proposed epoch defined by humanity’s global impact, explicitly link time and ecology, casting the present as a geological era of change. Critical inquiry into such concepts examines how language and metaphor shape thought: for instance, thinking of nature as a “resource” or a “web” implies certain values and temporal spans.
Building on its recent conferences on environmental scholarship in Africa, the 5th CECTRRA International Conference 2026 invites papers that analyze and critique the conceptual tools (scientific, philosophical, artistic, and vernacular) used in time and ecological thought, and how they interact with temporal assumptions. The conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, and students to rethink ecology through the lenses of time and concept formation. We welcome critical, comparative, historical, and creative contributions.