Empowering heritage: understanding the cultural costs of South Africa's energy futures

方便、可靠的能源网络被认为对非洲国家的现代化至关重要，向可再生能源和低碳能源系统的过渡伴随着人人享有公平能源供应的承诺。在南非，1994年的民主化带来了国家对能源公正和遗产公正的保障：重振被种族主义政府长期否认的非洲历史。然而，为了实现发展目标而建设能源基础设施会破坏考古遗迹，在获取电力和非洲历史之间产生冲突，而非洲历史直到最近才被确认为公共资源。在整个大陆，这些影响因地理位置、能源类型和国家法规而异，但由于数据可用性的障碍，其累积文化成本在任何规模上都是未知的。与许多后殖民地国家一样，南非的工业改革迫使开发商减轻建筑对考古遗址的影响，但由于缺乏可获取的数据，因此无法评估这种问责制的结果。该项目通过对国家监管储存库SAHRIS的新颖使用，对南非能源部门的考古影响进行了前所未有的分析，记录了政府和非政府行为者如何试图在为进步服务的过程中挽救过去。我们调查了三十年来的放松管制、私有化和向可再生能源的转变是如何影响有损失风险的考古数据的，并揭示了这些损失是在哪里以及对谁造成的。在南非应对持续的停电和电网故障危机，并准备扩大可再生能源的使用之际，我们提供了一份急需的能源和遗产正义之间权衡的评估。能源转型的成败部分取决于社会因素，而在撒哈拉以南非洲，传统成本从未作为这样的因素进行过研究；我们开创性的项目弥补了这一差距，旨在促进南非的能源未来。我们专注于南非考古最丰富的省份（西开普省和林波波省），因为它们拥有丰富的遗产遗址，能源类型和基础设施的多样性，以及在农村和城市地区实现遗产正义的长期干预措施。这种选择使我们能够分析主要人口中心和能源集水区的遗产与工业之间的关系，同时将这种分析定位在对国内政治领域的详细理解中；这是对高度本地化案例研究的主流学科模式的补充。作为更深入问题的初步研究，我们将建立一个数据库，整理自1994年以来西开普省和林波波省SAHRIS与能源基础设施相关的所有监管决策。我们的数据库将连接能源项目生命周期内所有允许的行动，使我们能够查看从考古影响评估到缓解和救助的决策过程。对于所有报告，我们将提取有关人工制品类型和时间段、埋藏和地表特征以及人类遗骸的考古数据。我们的数据库将允许针对考古影响的地理分布、特定能源类型和基础设施的遗产成本、不同监管结果的频率以及不同形式考古的脆弱性提出有针对性的问题。为了将我们的发现与正在进行的研究和国家遗产与发展的优先事项联系起来，我们将在二年级组织一次政策研讨会。我们将在南非和英国的跨学科非洲研究论坛上通过研讨会和会议传播我们的发现。我们将出版四份出版物，包括一份为南非遗产管理机构撰写的政策审查论文、一份与伦敦大学学院出版社合作的开放获取专著，以及发表在顶级考古学和发展研究期刊上的文章。

Accessible, reliable energy grids are credited as crucial to modernization in African countries, with transitions to renewable and low-carbon energy systems accompanying promises of just energy provision for all. In South Africa, democratization in 1994 brought national guarantees of energy justice and heritage justice: revitalizing African pasts long-denied by racist governments. However, building energy infrastructure to achieve development targets damages archaeological remains, producing conflict between access to power and to African pasts only recently affirmed as public resources. Across the continent, these impacts vary based on geography, energy type, and national regulations but their cumulative cultural cost remains unknown at any scale due to barriers to data availability. And as in many post-colonies, South Africa's industrial reforms compelled developers to mitigate the effects of building on archaeological sites, but this lack of accessible data has precluded any effort to evaluate the outcomes of this accountability system.This project offers an unprecedented analysis of the archaeological impacts of South Africa's energy sector through novel use of the national regulatory repository SAHRIS, chronicling how governmental and non-governmental actors have attempted to salvage the past from destruction in the service of progress. We interrogate how three decades of deregulation, privatization, and shifts to renewables have affected archaeological data at risk of loss, and shed new light on where and to whom that loss has accrued. We provide an urgently-needed assessment of the tradeoffs between energy and heritage justice as South Africa navigates an on-going crisis of blackouts and failing grids, and prepares to expand access to renewables. Energy transitions succeed or fail based partly on social factors, and in sub-Saharan Africa heritage costs have never been examined as such a factor; our groundbreaking project rectifies this gap and aims to facilitate South Africa's energy futures. We focus on South Africa's most archaeologically-rich provinces (Western Cape and Limpopo) for their wealth of heritage sites, diversity of energy types and infrastructures deployed, and long-term interventions to achieve heritage justice across rural and urban areas. This selection allows us to analyse the relationship between heritage and industry across major population centres and energy catchment areas, while locating this analysis within a detailed understanding of domestic political arenas; this complements the prevailing disciplinary model of highly localized case study.As a preliminary to more in-depth questions, we will produce a database collating all regulatory decisions from SAHRIS related to energy infrastructures in Western Cape and Limpopo since 1994. Our database will link all permitted actions within the lifespan of an energy project, enabling us to view the decision-making process from archaeological impact assessment to mitigation and salvage. For all reports, we will extract archaeological data on artefact types and time periods, buried and surface features, and human remains. Our database will permit targeted questions about the geographical distribution of archaeological impacts, the heritage costs of specific energy types and infrastructures, the frequency of different regulatory outcomes, and the vulnerabilities of different forms of archaeology. To contextualize our findings within on-going research and national priorities for heritage and development we will organize a policy workshop in Year 2. We will disseminate our finds through seminars and conferences in cross-disciplinary African Studies fora in South Africa and the UK. We will produce four publications, including a policy review paper for South Africa's heritage regulatory agency, an open access monograph with UCL Press, and articles in top archaeology and development studies journals.