Short Abstract

This panel reimagines environmental justice through knowledge, technology and power across scales. It explores green paradiplomacy, Indigenous and local knowledge, data and socio-technical infrastructures, asking how environmental governance in Africa can become more plural, inclusive and just.

Long Abstract

Africa occupies a paradoxical position in global environmental politics. Despite contributing relatively little to global greenhouse gas emissions, African societies and ecosystems face disproportionate climate and environmental vulnerabilities. Vulnerability is often reproduced through uneven access to knowledge, technology, resources and decision-making.

This panel reimagines environmental justice in Africa by examining how environmental power is constituted, contested and redistributed across scales. It asks: how do knowledge, technology and power interact across scales to shape environmental justice, and what might more just African environmental futures look like?

Drawing on political ecology, environmental geography and socio-technical approaches, the panel conceptualises environmental justice as multidimensional and relational, encompassing distribution, recognition, participation, restoration and transformation. It asks how the production and circulation of environmental knowledge and technologies impact the visibility of harms, recognition of expertise, and the architecture of environmental governance.

Three interconnected dimensions shape the panel. First, green paradiplomacy examines how cities and subnational environmental authorities engage transnational networks and partnerships, creating new spaces for environmental cooperation while negotiating questions of local agency, dependency and accountability. Second, technology is understood as contested socio-technical infrastructure: geospatial technologies, digital monitoring, environmental data and early-warning systems may expand participation and accountability while simultaneously producing new forms of exclusion, surveillance and data dependency. Third, Indigenous and local knowledge is approached as situated epistemic authority rather than supplementary knowledge, challenging dominant environmental expertise and opening possibilities for more plural understandings of human–environment relations.

We invite contributions exploring climate governance, environmental data, cities, Indigenous knowledge and subnational environmental politics.

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