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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how youth-led movements in Kenya are challenging proposed global climate solutions and reshaping the understanding of climate justice. Through their actions, they emphasize the need for inclusive and locally relevant approaches in global climate measures and agreements.

Paper long abstract:

As the impacts lof the climate crisis become more urgent and visible, countries have responded by signing treaties and agreements like the Paris Agreement, aimed at reducing emissions and adapting to the growing threats to both human life and the environment. However, this global response has also exposed tensions between the actions of industrialized nations and the lived realities of those in the global south, particularly African communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change. Amid these dynamics, youth climate activists have emerged as powerful voices within the broader environmental movement, challenging both the pace of climate action and the equity of proposed solutions. This paper examines critical sites of climate conflicts in Kenya where youth are actively opposing the hegemony of international organizations, such as the United Nations and its affiliated frameworks, which, while promoting global climate agreements, often reflect and reproduce dominant discourses that marginalize local contexts and indigenous solutions. It examines how the youth are pushing back against carbon-offset schemes and just energy transition projects in Narok, Mau Complex areas and Northern Kenya which reinforce climate and green colonialism. Using the neo-Gramscian perspective of counter-hegemony, which critiques dominant power structures and emphasizes grassroots resistance, the paper explores how African youth climate activists are constructing counter-narratives that challenge the ideological and material dominance of global climate governance and production systems.