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Paper short abstract

Small-scale mining supports rural livelihoods but increases land degradation and heat. Using satellite data analysis (2005–2025), this study shows ASM in Tarkwa Nsuaem raises land surface temperatures, affecting farming, water and highlights climate injustice facing poor mining communities.

Paper long abstract

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is an important source of livelihood for many people in Africa, especially in rural areas where job opportunities are limited. However, ASM is also linked to land degradation and local climate stress, and the resulting risks are unevenly shared. Poor communities who depend on small-scale mining suffer most from heat and land degradation, yet they are often ignored in climate policies that focus on large-scale mining.

The study uses GIS and satellite images from 2005 to 2025 to examine how small-scale mining has affected land surface temperature in Tarkwa Nsuaem. Landsat images were analysed in QGIS and ArcGIS to map land-use changes and compare surface temperatures across different land types over time.

The study shows that the growth of ASM has led to the clearing of vegetation, exposure of bare soil, and damage to the natural landscape. These changes increase land surface temperature, making local areas hotter. Higher surface temperatures affect farming, water availability, and human health, especially for people who live and work close to mining sites.

By using GIS data and a climate justice approach, the study shows that heat from small-scale mining reflects deeper inequalities in power and development. The Tarkwa Nsuaem case shows the challenge of sustainable development in Africa and calls for fair climate and land policies that include artisanal miners.

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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.

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This study shows how Ghanaian community environmental initiatives advance climate justice by using local governance practices. These actions reveal gaps in national policy and demonstrate how community leadership can shift power and support fair, sustainable climate futures.

Paper long abstract

Despite policy commitments aimed at adaptation and resilience in Ghana, climate governance remains dominated by technocratic, top-down interventions. These approaches however, fail to address the structural drivers of vulnerability namely, unequal resource distribution, weak local decision-making power and the marginalization of indigenous ecological knowledge. A persistent disconnect is observed between national climate policy frameworks and community-level governance practices that mediate environmental change. This gap limits Ghana’s ability to advance climate justice as a more transformative development agenda.

This study aims to examine how community-led ecological governance initiatives in Ghana operationalise climate justice and expose the limitations of existing climate governance architectures.

Using an embedded qualitative case study design, the study compares three forms of community environmental action in Ghana, namely women-led mangrove restoration in the Volta Basin, youth digital monitoring networks in Accra, and customary land stewardship in northern Ghana. These practices show how groups promote climate justice by redistributing authority, exposing policy gaps, and shaping sustainable futures. The study draws data from semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to understand how community initiatives support climate justice.

Findings suggest that these community initiatives offer different ways of making and sharing environmental decisions. They promote fairness, equal access and shared responsibility across generations. These examples show that communities are not only vulnerable to climate change but also produce new ideas and practices that improve environmental governance. The paper argues that bringing these community-led approaches into national climate policy is important for building fair, locally grounded, and sustainable climate futures in Ghana.

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Reclaiming climate futures in Southern Africa: Ubuntu-driven solidarity shifts responses from adaptation to transformative justice, centering local agency & challenging global inequalities."

Paper long abstract

In Southern Africa, climate impacts exacerbate historical injustices, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. While mainstream climate discourse emphasizes adaptation, this paper argues for transformative change rooted in ubuntu—a relational ethic of interdependence. Drawing on Zimbabwe’s climate struggles, it examines how grassroots movements reframe climate justice as a struggle for dignity, equity, and self-determined futures.

The paper interrogates:

- How ubuntu-informed practices challenge individualist, technocratic approaches to climate change.

- Ways local solidarities address intersecting crises (climate, poverty, colonial legacies).

- Tensions between global climate frameworks and community-led transformative agendas.

- Potential for ubuntu to reshape climate governance and partnerships.

By centering African futures and ubuntu as epistemic anchors, this paper advocates for climate justice that disrupts dominant narratives, redistributes power, and reimagines development as collective liberation. It highlights how ubuntu-driven solidarity can shift responses from adaptation to transformative change, centering local agency and challenging global inequalities. This approach may foster more inclusive, resilient futures aligned with Southern Africa’s needs. The paper concludes by exploring implications for policy, partnerships, and praxis, emphasizing ubuntu as a lens for reimagining climate justice in Africa.

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Paper long abstract

Climate justice exposes the paradox that those least responsible for greenhouse emissions, primarily women, indigenous peoples and small-island states, suffer the gravest climate harms yet remain marginal to legal regimes allocating carbon rights and adaptation finance. Transformative futures envisage institutional rearrangements that redress these asymmetries through reparative redistribution, recognition of plural knowledge and democratization of land, energy and fiscal governance. This article examines how environmental-law instruments can be recalibrated to facilitate community-centered, gender-responsive development pathways for the attainment of climate justice. Employing doctrinal-systematic analysis, the study first codes 180 NDCs, green-bond frameworks and REDD+ programmes (2015-2024) to trace textual marginalization of collective tenure, reproductive labour and indigenous epistemologies. It then interprets these findings against hard-law obligations in the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Escazú Agreement to identify normative gaps.

The analysis reveals a persistent framework that treats women as vulnerable beneficiaries rather than autonomous rights-holders. It highlights statutory silence on valuing unpaid care work as an ecological contribution and the absence of mandatory finance linking historical emissions to current loss and damage. This obstructs community-centered, gender-responsive development. Consequently, the article proposes model legislation embedding Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), mandating gender-responsive budgeting in adaptation finance, and recognizing collective tenure. By demonstrating how environmental law can operationalize redistribution, recognition, and representation, the study offers a roadmap for advancing climate justice through transformative, gender-responsive frameworks.

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This paper shows how community-led climate and health task teams in marginalised rural Zimbabwe redistribute power, strengthen local resilience, and challenge top-down development models thus demonstrating that climate-resilient development is a political process grounded in community agency.

Paper long abstract

Climate change is intensifying structural vulnerabilities in marginalised regions, positioning health systems as critical arenas where power, inequality, and resilience converge. In Zimbabwe’s historically under-resourced Binga district, recurrent floods, heatwaves, and climate-sensitive disease outbreaks have exposed the limitations of top-down development and adaptation models. This paper examines how community- and district-level Climate and Health Task teams, initiated under Pangaea Zimbabwe’s Wild4Life programme, reconfigure local power relations and promoting community agency.

The paper draws on a case study analysing an intervention that institutionalised participatory climate governance within local health and community systems. The initiative established district and ward Climate and Health Task Teams, integrated community voices into health planning, invested in climate-resilient infrastructure, and strengthened the capacities of frontline health workers. Rather than positioning communities as passive beneficiaries, the model foregrounded local knowledge, collective action, and co-production of climate responses.

After one year, all 17 targeted health facilities (100%) were upgraded to climate-resilient standards and equipped with renewable energy, mobile outreach services expanded by 50% to reach remote populations and locally led climate-health initiatives continued beyond external project funding. Importantly, community leaders, women, youth, and frontline health workers emerged as advocates and role models for climate-responsive health and livelihood practices, challenging entrenched hierarchies between technical experts and local actors.

The paper reveals that climate-resilient development is not only a technical endeavour but a political process requiring the redistribution of power and recommends institutionalising community-led climate-health governance within national systems and recognition of community agency as a central pillar of climate justice.

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This paper employs a mixed-methods approach to examine the transformative potential of climate just responses in Ghana. It aims to draw on these sources of knowledge to assess gaps and opportunities for enhancing and strengthening climate justice responses in Ghana.

Paper long abstract

As the saying goes, ‘[s]he who plays the piper calls the tune’. In Ghana, climate justice approaches have been, and continue to be, largely shaped by top-down approaches- government and international development partners-led through funding and policy frameworks. Through policy and programming interventions, these global partners support national and community organizations in centering vulnerable groups in climate change responses, including education and risk-response measures. However, evidence indicates persistent gaps in the implementation of just and equitable climate responses. There are gaps in knowledge about climate change, in attention to the intersectional dimensions of climate change risks, and in the representation of vulnerable voices in decision-making, among other areas. While situating Ghana’s climate response within global development discourses and support may be helpful, we argue that overreliance on international framings of climate justice and sources of support creates a dependent environment that limits recognitional and procedural justice. Using data from national climate justice policies and programs, NGO activities focused on climate justice, and individual interviews with residents of selected communities in Ghana, we show how climate injustice is embedded in skewed national responses that center on certain aspects of climate change at the expense of others. We argue that, for Ghana to achieve transformative climate justice, it will require local piper players- national bodies and community organizations to contextualize knowledge and support shaping their interventions. Moreover, there is a need for inclusive, intersectional capacity-building to equip these local pipers and the community to adopt a holistic lens on policymaking and programing.

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Paper short abstract

Africa bears disproportionate climate impacts despite minimal responsibility. This paper highlights how youth and women are leading grassroots, indigenous and feminist climate justice movements, shifting narratives from adaptation to equity, sovereignty and systemic transformation.

Paper long abstract

Communities that have made less contribution towards the global crisis in Africa suffer the effects of climate change more than others. However, in the face of these difficulties, Africa provides special opportunities of change towards transformation. The youth and women are the crucial agents of this change as they, despite their often-marginalized positions, are becoming a formidable force in the quest to pursue climate justice. The paper focus on how the youth and women are contributing towards climate-just movements in Africa. It examines how the movement by grassroots activists under these groups is changing the climate action narrative. Through examining local projects, including ecological restoration and community-based activism, this paper shows how youth and women are integrating indigenous knowledge, leading the way towards reparations, and insisting on climate justice that is beyond adaptation. Using the cases of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and feminist climate justice leadership, the paper shows how these two movements are not merely a reaction to the climate change but are proactively seeking to redefine the future of development in Africa. These leaders are challenging global injustices, driving change in the system, and finding ways to create a more equitable and sustainable world. Finally, this paper holds that through the focus on youth and women voices African-led movements are developing a new form of climate justice - one that places value on sovereignty, fairness and agency of those most affected.

Keywords: Climate Justice, Youth Leadership, Women in Climate Action, Indigenous Knowledge, Transformative Change

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Paper short abstract

This paper explores climate justice challenges in the DRC, highlighting the limits of adaptation and advocating for transformative change rooted in social equity, governance reform, and local community empowerment to secure sustainable African futures.

Paper long abstract

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) faces severe climate challenges that exacerbate existing socio-economic inequalities and environmental degradation. This paper critically examines the concept of climate justice within the DRC context, emphasizing that traditional adaptation strategies often fall short of addressing systemic injustices and structural drivers of vulnerability. Drawing on interdisciplinary research and field experiences, the study illustrates how climate impacts disproportionately affect marginalized communities, including indigenous peoples, women, and youth, who have limited access to resources and decision-making power.

The paper argues for a shift beyond incremental adaptation toward transformative change that integrates climate action with social justice, inclusive governance, and sustainable development. It highlights the role of local knowledge and community-led initiatives in shaping resilient responses and calls for stronger institutional frameworks to support equitable climate policies. The analysis further discusses the importance of international solidarity and reparative measures that recognize historical responsibilities and support capacity building in the Global South.

Ultimately, this paper contributes to ongoing dialogues on African futures by advocating a holistic approach that connects climate justice to broader struggles for peace, democracy, and human rights. It aims to inform policymakers, scholars, and practitioners engaged in climate governance and development in the DRC and similar contexts.

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Paper short abstract

This paper elucidates drawings from five community case studies to show how gender-responsive collective action through the VSLAs scheme strengthens climate resilience in Ghana by reducing risk, improving women’s access to groundnut seed systems, and strengthening local agency and decision-making.

Paper long abstract

Northern Ghana faces increasing climate risks that undermine rainfed agriculture, particularly for smallholder farmers who depend on groundnut production for food security and income. These risks intersect with persistent gender inequalities in access to land, finance, and agricultural services, constraining women’s adaptive capacity and reinforcing productivity gaps. This paper explores how gendered collective action, operationalized through the Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) scheme, contributes to locally grounded responses to climate-related risk.

Using qualitative evidence from five selected communities viz: —Wantugu, Salankpang, Gbimsi, Baribari, and Tibani—the study analyses VSLAs established under the Tropical Legumes III project in partnership with SEND-Ghana in 2018. The findings show that VSLAs go beyond financial inclusion to act as entry points for changes in gender and social norms. By embedding savings and credit within community-based groundnut seed systems, the VSLAs enable women to collectively invest in quality seed, share climate risk, and reduce reliance on exploitative credit.

The findings show that VSLAs function not only as financial mechanisms but also as social institutions that reshape gender relations, foster local cooperation, and support climate-resilient agricultural practices. Through negotiated access to land, collective decision-making, and community accountability, these associations create alternative pathways for managing climate risk rooted in solidarity and local agency.

From a policy perspective, VSLAs are scalable, cost-effective platforms integrating gender equality, climate adaptation, and seed systems, demonstrating how community-led financial institutions support inclusive, resilient agrarian futures and advance debates on gender, collective action, and climate justice in climate-vulnerable dryland regions.

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Paper short abstract

Africa faces extreme climate impacts. Climate justice demands transformative change: decolonize knowledge, reimagine economies, amplify grassroots voices & foster solidarity. Shift from surviving to thriving!

Paper long abstract

Climate justice is a pressing concern for African futures, as the continent grapples with the disproportionate impacts of climate change. While adaptation strategies have dominated the narrative, there is a growing recognition that transformative change is necessary to address the root causes of climate injustice. This paper explores the intersections of climate justice, African futures, and transformative change, highlighting the need for a shift from mere adaptation to systemic transformation.

Africa's vulnerability to climate change is exacerbated by historical and ongoing global inequalities, colonialism, and neoliberal economic structures. Climate justice demands that we address these structural injustices and prioritize the rights and knowledge of African communities. Transformative change requires a fundamental rethinking of development paradigms, economic systems, and power relations.

Drawing on African perspectives and epistemologies, this paper argues that climate justice must be grounded in principles of equity, solidarity, and Ubuntu (interconnectedness). It highlights the importance of community-led initiatives, indigenous knowledge, and feminist perspectives in shaping climate responses.

The paper proposes a framework for transformative change, centered on:

1. Decolonizing climate knowledge: Challenging dominant Western epistemologies and centering African perspectives.

2. Reimagining economies: Shifting towards regenerative, just, and equitable economic systems.

3. Amplifying grassroots voices: Supporting community-led climate initiatives and feminist movements.

4. Fostering solidarity

By prioritizing transformative change, we can create a more just and sustainable future for Africa, one that is grounded in the principles of climate justice and Ubuntu.

✅ Keywords: Climate justice, African futures, transformative change, adaptation, Ubuntu, decolonization, equity, solidarity.

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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.

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This study explores how women and youth in rural communities in Northern Ghana use indigenous knowledge and traditional practices to build resilience to climate change. Findings show that locally led, context-specific strategies reduce yield losses and support livelihoods during droughts and floods

Paper long abstract

In rural communities, women and youth are disproportionately affected by climate change through livelihood practices that depend heavily on natural ecosystems. In Ghana, most rural households rely on subsistence farming, making them highly vulnerable to climate variability. Unpredictable rainfall, rising temperatures, droughts, floods, and biodiversity loss increasingly threaten agricultural productivity and livelihood security. In response, rural farmers draw on indigenous knowledge and traditional agricultural practices to sustain production and strengthen resilience under changing climatic conditions. This paper examines locally led, climate-just approaches that move beyond narrow adaptation responses to promote broader socio-ecological transformation. It foregrounds farmers’ indigenous knowledge systems as critical resources for resilience building, while centring their agency in developing context-specific responses to climate-related challenges affecting farm yields and livelihoods in Yapei and Wungu in Northern Ghana. The study adopted a qualitative research design, employing in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs). Data were collected through interviews with 22 participants and four FGDs. Findings show that women, youth, and men identified rising temperatures and irregular rainfall as the most significant climatic changes. To cope with these challenges, participants employed various strategies, including traditional land preparation techniques, farming along riverbanks and growing drought-resistant crops. Those who combined several strategies during periods of floods and droughts reported reduced yield losses. Participants also adopted selected climate-smart agricultural practices to enhance food and livelihood security. The study concludes that locally grounded, context-specific resilience strategies rooted in indigenous knowledge constitute a transformative pathway for strengthening agricultural production and livelihood resilience during climate change.

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Using empirical evidence from the Nile Basin, this paper reframes the GERD as climate infrastructure that redistributes vulnerability rather than resilience, challenging dominant adaptation narratives in African climate governance.

Paper long abstract

Climate justice debates in Africa often remain confined to discussions of adaptation and resilience, obscuring the deeper structural inequities embedded in climate governance. Drawing on empirical findings from forty-eight stakeholder interviews and field data across the Nile Basin, this paper reframes the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a contested climate justice project rather than a purely technical or security issue. Field data reveal two interlinked dynamics: first, the persistent exclusion of downstream and local actors from meaningful decision-making processes, constituting a procedural justice deficit; and second, the uneven distribution of climate risks and developmental benefits associated with large-scale hydropower infrastructure. The findings demonstrate that while Ethiopia articulates GERD as an assertion of African agency, energy sovereignty, and climate adaptation, its unilateral governance structure reproduces systemic inequalities that undermine distributive and intergenerational justice across the basin. Communities most vulnerable to climate variability, particularly agrarian and riparian populations, remain marginal to governance frameworks intended to secure climate resilience and development. This disjuncture highlights the limitations of adaptation-centered approaches, which fail to address power asymmetries in transboundary water politics. By situating the GERD within broader struggles over sovereignty, historical marginalization, and ecological futures, the paper advances a climate justice lens grounded in African realities. It argues that transformative, planetary futures in Africa require climate governance models that center procedural inclusion, reparative cooperation, and regionally embedded knowledge systems. In doing so, the study provides empirical insights into how African-led infrastructure can either perpetuate injustice or serve as a catalyst for systemic socio-ecological transformation.

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Paper short abstract

Oil exploration and exploitation by companies in Nigeria's Niger Delta are directly linked to climate change, significantly impacting the inhabitants. Efforts to address climate change must combine financial reparations with accountability to address the consequences.

Paper long abstract

Oil exploration has contributed to climate change in the Niger Delta region. The impacts of oil exploration and exploitation on climate change are enormous. Oil exploration often led to oil spills, gas flaring, land degradation, and deforestation.   The activities often resulted in pollution, which in turn results in climate change. The region has already begun to feel the impact on food security, high temperatures, increasing risk of diseases, and rising extreme weather. Attempts have been made to address the impact of environmental degradation on the inhabitants of the Niger Delta region, including legal action, clean-up, and institutional action. It is worrisome to note that these steps have not yielded expected results. Oil exploration and exploitation continue to stimulate climate change in the region, and the inhabitants continue to feel its consequences. Recognition Theory is used in this study to examine the effects of climate change and how policies can benefit the inhabitants of Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The qualitative method of data collection was employed to collect information from participants. In-depth interviews were conducted with fifty-two participants in three purposive selected locations: Patani, Ogoni, and Egwa. It was found that, as a result of environmental degradation, climate change has affected the economy, farming, and health of the people. It was found that accountability and reparation have not been attempted in the region. The study suggested that climate justice should include financial reparations to have a direct impact on the inhabitants of Nigeria’s Niger Delta.

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Paper short abstract

This paper adopts a descriptive method to review how the people of Niger Delta region have engaged in collective struggles against environmental pollution due to the activities of oil exploration and exploitation in their ancestral lands. The pains and gains of these efforts were analysed.

Paper long abstract

With the growing recognition that climate change is an issue of social, environmental, racial, intergenerational, and other forms of justice, this paper adopts a descriptive method to review how the people of Niger Delta region in Nigeria have engaged in collective struggles against environmental pollution due to the activities of oil exploration and exploitation in their ancestral lands; which have not only brought about climate change induced crisis, but environmental hazards and degradation, the agitations in the past decades have compelled international, national and sub-national agencies to pay an attention and also carry out some actions, the paper profiles the agitations which was both peaceful, and, unfortunately violent in some instances among a few indigenous youths, the paper examines how relevant authorities’ interventions brought relief and hope in through compensations and efforts aimed at cleaning up the environment and also ensuring sustainability. The paper reviews this action in the light of Nancy Fraser's tripartite theory of justice anchored on redistribution, representation and reconciliation and calls for its extension to other local communities with similar challenges (but with low voices). The paper argues that while adaptation and resilience strategies are essential for managing immediate climate risks and environmental degradation, they often operate within the same economic, political, and social structures that produced vulnerability in the first place. However, justice-centered approach as articulated in this paper instead calls for reviewing these structures by addressing historical inequalities, redistributing power and resources, and reshaping development pathways to align with ecological limits.