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- Convenor:
-
Gideon Baffoe
(University of York)
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- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Climate justice, just transitions & environmental futures
- Location:
- L2.14
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Dublin
Short Abstract
This panel reframes climate justice in Africa, focusing on locally led, climate-just approaches that transcend adaptation to drive systemic socio-ecological transformation. It highlights indigenous knowledge, reparations, and African agency for generational justice and sustainable futures.
Description
Climate change poses urgent and multifaceted challenges for Africa, disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities despite the continent’s minimal contribution to global emissions. This panel critically reframes climate justice in African contexts, moving beyond adaptation and resilience toward transformative socio-ecological change grounded in justice. Centering African agency and indigenous knowledge systems, Papers will explore procedural, distributive, retributive, and generational dimensions of climate justice. The panel will examine local and regional examples of climate-just initiatives that integrate reparations, community leadership, and ecological restoration to challenge global inequities and foster systemic change. Discussions will highlight the role of marginalized groups, especially women and youth, as innovators and frontline defenders of environmental sustainability and social justice. Drawing on movements like the African Climate Change Human Rights Advisory application, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance efforts, and feminist climate justice leadership, the panel underscores how African-led frameworks offer novel pathways for holistic transformation. It aims to provoke critical reflection on achieving climate justice that strengthens sovereignty, equity, and sustainability within Africa’s development futures. The panel invites papers that will contribute to reframing climate action debates through a justice lens reflective of African realities, histories, and aspirations for transformative futures.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Wednesday 8 July, 2026, -Paper short abstract
Environmental degradation and climate change threaten livelihoods in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. This study shows that grassroots climate action and community agency enhance resilience and challenge unequal power relations, highlighting the need for inclusive, justice-driven climate governance.
Paper long abstract
The Niger Delta region of Nigeria continues to experience environmental degradation driven by oil exploitation, climate change, and weak governance, with serious consequences for livelihoods and socio-ecological sustainability. Communities face heightened vulnerability as dependence on climate-sensitive natural resources intersects with political and economic marginalisation. While policy responses often portray affected populations as passive victims, this paper foregrounds grassroots climate action and community agency as drivers of transformative development futures. Anchored in climate justice and political ecology frameworks, the study examines how community-led initiatives—including environmental monitoring, livelihood diversification, collective adaptation practices, and advocacy for environmental accountability—shape resilience and development trajectories in selected Niger Delta communities. A qualitative case study approach is adopted, drawing on secondary data, policy documents, and empirical insights from community-based livelihood systems to analyse the relationship between grassroots climate action and transformative outcomes. The findings show that strong community agency enhances adaptive capacity, strengthens social cohesion, improves livelihood sustainability, and enables communities to contest unequal power relations involving the state and extractive corporations. However, the transformative potential of grassroots initiatives is constrained by limited institutional support, political exclusion, and unequal access to climate finance and decision-making spaces. The paper argues that sustainable development in the Niger Delta cannot be achieved through top-down environmental policies alone. It concludes by calling for inclusive climate governance that recognises and integrates community-led initiatives into national climate strategies, thereby advancing locally driven, equitable, and resilient development futures in the region.
Paper short abstract
This paper examines participatory visual methods in climate adaptation research through a pilot study in Nigeria’s Lake Chad region. It shows how localised approaches can obscure structural drivers of vulnerability, and proposes a critical, justice-oriented framework of situated climate knowledge.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the potential and limitations of participatory visual methods in researching locally led climate adaptation, drawing on a pilot study with farming communities in Nigeria’s Lake Chad region. We examine knowledge systems as the foundation of climate adaptation, shaping how communities understand and respond to climate change. Using photovoice diaries, we explore how participatory visual research surfaces tensions between indigenous and dominant Western knowledge systems. We observe that participatory approaches tend to centre the local, and as such risk neglecting the global political and economic structures driving climate vulnerability, leading to apolitical or technocratic framings of adaptation. Revisiting the core theory of participatory research - Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy - we argue that embedding participatory research in conscientização (critical consciousness) can make it truly transformative. In dialogue with Donna Haraway’s notion of situated seeing, we propose a framework that grounds climate understanding in local experience while making visible the structural drivers and power dynamics shaping climate impacts. The paper makes two main contributions: first, it proposes a framework for participatory climate research that brings critical pedagogy into dialogue with climate pedagogy; second, it introduces the concept of situated climate knowledge, which grounds climate understanding in local experience while recognizing structural drivers and supporting adaptation strategies that are both context-specific and justice-oriented.
Paper short abstract
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, this paper examines how climate-oriented urban transformation in Kigali intersects with land governance, livelihood restructuring, and questions of environmental justice.
Paper long abstract
African cities are increasingly positioned at the forefront of global climate action debates, yet the justice implications of urban climate interventions remain insufficiently examined. Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, is frequently celebrated as a model of environmentally progressive urban governance, with initiatives such as wetland restoration, green infrastructure development, and environmentally oriented spatial planning presented as pathways toward climate-resilient urban futures. However, these transformations also raise critical questions about the social and distributive dimensions of climate justice. This paper examines how climate-oriented urban transformation in Kigali intersects with land governance, livelihood restructuring, and questions of environmental justice. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, stakeholder interviews, and policy analysis conducted between 2019 and 2024, the study investigates how large-scale urban redevelopment and environmental protection initiatives – often justified in the name of climate resilience – reshape access to land, housing, and livelihood opportunities for urban residents. While these interventions contribute to important environmental objectives, they may also generate new forms of socio-spatial inequality through processes of land expropriation, displacement, and the reconfiguration of informal livelihoods. By situating Kigali within broader debates on climate justice and African urban futures, the paper argues that climate action in rapidly urbanising contexts must be evaluated not only through environmental outcomes but also through its procedural, distributive, and generational justice implications. The analysis highlights the need for climate governance frameworks that place local livelihoods, social equity, and inclusive participation at the centre of Africa’s emerging pathways toward sustainable urban transformation.