Paper short abstract:

In Jinja, Uganda, narratives of climate change are interwoven with rapid social transformations across the generations and perceived breakdowns in traditional reciprocities and moralities exacerbated by urban poverty, which intersect in the projection of an increasingly uncertain future.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic and community theatre work, this paper illustrates how within the urban community of Jinja, a town in Eastern Uganda, narratives of climate change are interwoven with perceived social transformations across the generations, which intersect in the projection of an increasingly uncertain future. As part of a wider comparative project examining local imaginaries of intergenerational justice, this paper explores multiple imaginaries of changing weather across the life course, which stretch across the religious, the generational, the structural, the gendered, and the temporal. Here, conceptualisations of weather are often framed through the lens of changes in the ways people live, as experienced by people over their life course. As discussions of sustainability and environmental conservation surface amidst a context of a surging population, rampant deforestation and urbanisation, and increasingly erratic weather, this paper demonstrates how changes in, and uncertainties about, weather, are inextricably interwoven with perceived changes in the generations, and breakdowns in traditional reciprocities and moralities exacerbated by urban poverty; contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the human scale of climate change for urban Ugandans enmeshed within rapidly changing social worlds.