Presentation short abstract

This paper reports initial ethnographic findings on climate action under polycrisis in Lebanon, tracing how socioeconomic breakdown and hierarchical implementation impact environmental action.

Presentation long abstract

What does climate action look like in Lebanon, a country facing economic collapse, war, and environmental decline? As temperatures rise faster than the global average in the Eastern Mediterranean, Lebanese communities confront climate change under conditions of profound uncertainty. This paper reports initial findings from my new ethnographic research on how climate action is imagined and practiced amid overlapping capitalogenic crises.

The in-progress fieldwork examines two initiatives: a grassroots environmental collective and an NGO-led climate adaptation project. Through data from participant observation, this presentation outlines how climate action is shaped by everyday struggles, weak climate governance, and global policy frameworks. The research introduces the concept of climate/collapse to think of how climate change is experienced not as an isolated phenomenon but as entangled with socioeconomic breakdown, political stagnation, and colonial war: a polycrisis that reconfigures environmental engagement.

This paper asks: to what degree do local actors frame their climate action through pragmatic and relational strategies rather than abstract global narratives? How do climate actors negotiate between urgent material needs and long-term ecological visions? How are environmental responses embedded in social and political realities, and to what degree can tracing them challenge universalist assumptions about climate governance?

Rather than treating climate change as a universal challenge, this paper highlights how Lebanese actors reimagine environmental futures through climate action amidst intertwined social and ecological breakdowns.