Environmental racism, community psychology and climate justice - initiating connections
By Munguzo Jean, Fousseny Traore, Dr Kiran Bains and Dr Maria Fernandes-Jesus
July 2023
A little over a year ago, while the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP26, was taking place, Psychologists for Social Change London organised a webinar on ‘Environmental racism, community psychology and climate justice.’
The webinar took place on the 24 of November in 2021 and aimed to bring together community psychologists and climate activists from the global South to discuss what environmental racism looks like and how community psychology can help us move towards climate justice.
Kiran chaired the section. As invited speakers, we had:
One year later, the topics discussed are still relevant for practitioners, researchers and activists, and we would like to highlight some of the main topics/ideas discussed during the webinar.
Intersections of race and climate change
Firstly, more than ever, communities from the global South are most likely to be affected by climate injustices. Environmental racism is a systemic and structural issue, affecting mostly people from the global majority: Africa, South America, and Asia. Environmental and climate activists (often from indigenous communities) are the most vulnerable activists in the world and yet they steward a very large share of our most biodiverse regions in the world. However they often face stiff opposition, harassment and physical attacks; they are the most likely to be killed of any activists. Fousseny shared his experience organising climate demonstrations in Mali, a country that perceives protests for the climate as illegal activity. Protesting for the climate was often risky for organisers, and involved a need to be creative and resourceful (e.g. holding rallies as ‘parties’ and meeting ‘events’) and Fousseny had already been arrested several times. This led him to living as a refugee in Tunisia for two years, as he was at risk of political persecution in his own country. Fousseny shared why joint efforts in activism are so important:
https://on.soundcloud.com/gEpcS
Mali is an example of a country that is being impacted heavily by climate change, despite its very low carbon emissions. Many farmers in the country have been seeing crops failing and that has made them vulnerable to recruitment by terrorism groups, amidst growing political and social instability. There already exist refugees due to climate change, but they do not have the same international protections as those who are fleeing direct persecution as they cannot return home once it has been deemed safe. Likewise, Maria shared that people may not make an explicit link between climate change and poverty but environmental degradation and climate change do influence people’s living standards and much of Fousseny’s work also involved educating others in his community on this topic.
Climate activism in the global South
https://on.soundcloud.com/tKF9S
Contrary to the media representation of a climate activist, people in the global South resist and fight climate change every day. Nevertheless, they are often excluded and marginalised, facing additional barriers to their activism. Their international visibility is often limited, despite the fact that there are many examples worldwide of groups and communities resisting projects with environmental impacts (see for example, the Environmental Justice Atlas). From the water defenders in Honduras to South Africa’s mining-affected communities, there are several examples of groups and communities fighting against environmental destruction and contamination.
Young people in particular are at the frontline of climate change. Climate change is, in many contexts, already a reality that youth cannot escape from and they are playing a key role in leading climate activism in countries in the Global South. In Uganda, for example, several climate action projects are led by young people, who invest their time and energy to raise awareness of climate change, protest for effective climate action, and demand global and local change (see here). Despite the several youth-led climate projects led by black youth, their voices are often erased from climate change debates. In the webinar, Fousseny shared his experience of climate activism in Mali and Munguzo talked about his experience in Uganda. Fousseny started climate activism very early and was introduced to activism by his uncle who was a farmer. He saw the ‘movement growing and the rebellion, and then became inspired to fight against climate change.’ Munguzo works daily with refugee people in the Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. He speaks about the struggle to access natural resources below:
https://on.soundcloud.com/do63c
The Unidos Project works to ensure that the needs of refugees are fulfilled and that sustainability goals are considered in any intervention (see here).
Institutional inertia
In our discussion around the importance of COPs over the last three decades, we came to the conclusion that the solutions that have been proposed are not enough to address the current climate crisis. Besides, the fact that parties participated in COPs does not mean that they will deliver the action they agreed to. History has shown that the change has been limited and often constrained by political leaders, particularly from the Global North. As mentioned by Maria in the webinar “we keep delaying radical change”. Overall, the measures that are being implemented are not enough and the process of implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation measures in the global South have been under-funded until now. Despite several promises and international agreements, rich countries, which are the most responsible for climate change, are not contributing. For example, the 100 billion dollars a year in funding promised to countries to mitigate climate change by rich countries has not been delivered. Most of this has been promised in the form of loans and has not been allocated to mitigate the effects of climate change. This has exacerbated debt injustice and put many more vulnerable people at risk. Additionally, stopping “fossil fuel” extraction, for example, is not seriously discussed in these COPs. ‘We need more radical and transformative change. Related to this there was an agreement that capitalism is the basis of the problem, including by the IPCC in one of its leaked reports (https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-09-02/the-ipcc-leaks-and-unbridled-capitalism/ ). It was also highlighted that we need to do much more for certain countries, such as those in the African continent. We need to prioritise support and solidarity to those countries and communities being affected by climate change. This is a matter of climate justice!
July 2023
A little over a year ago, while the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP26, was taking place, Psychologists for Social Change London organised a webinar on ‘Environmental racism, community psychology and climate justice.’
The webinar took place on the 24 of November in 2021 and aimed to bring together community psychologists and climate activists from the global South to discuss what environmental racism looks like and how community psychology can help us move towards climate justice.
Kiran chaired the section. As invited speakers, we had:
- Fousseny Traoré started the Fridays for the Future movement fighting for climate action in Mali. Currently in the UK.
- Munguzo Jean is an activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo based in Uganda, where he teaches refugees how to teach local farmers permaculture and low-tech solutions to live better with less.
- Maria Fernandes-Jesus, a researcher and lecturer in psychology, works on activism and climate change-related issues.
One year later, the topics discussed are still relevant for practitioners, researchers and activists, and we would like to highlight some of the main topics/ideas discussed during the webinar.
Intersections of race and climate change
Firstly, more than ever, communities from the global South are most likely to be affected by climate injustices. Environmental racism is a systemic and structural issue, affecting mostly people from the global majority: Africa, South America, and Asia. Environmental and climate activists (often from indigenous communities) are the most vulnerable activists in the world and yet they steward a very large share of our most biodiverse regions in the world. However they often face stiff opposition, harassment and physical attacks; they are the most likely to be killed of any activists. Fousseny shared his experience organising climate demonstrations in Mali, a country that perceives protests for the climate as illegal activity. Protesting for the climate was often risky for organisers, and involved a need to be creative and resourceful (e.g. holding rallies as ‘parties’ and meeting ‘events’) and Fousseny had already been arrested several times. This led him to living as a refugee in Tunisia for two years, as he was at risk of political persecution in his own country. Fousseny shared why joint efforts in activism are so important:
https://on.soundcloud.com/gEpcS
Mali is an example of a country that is being impacted heavily by climate change, despite its very low carbon emissions. Many farmers in the country have been seeing crops failing and that has made them vulnerable to recruitment by terrorism groups, amidst growing political and social instability. There already exist refugees due to climate change, but they do not have the same international protections as those who are fleeing direct persecution as they cannot return home once it has been deemed safe. Likewise, Maria shared that people may not make an explicit link between climate change and poverty but environmental degradation and climate change do influence people’s living standards and much of Fousseny’s work also involved educating others in his community on this topic.
Climate activism in the global South
https://on.soundcloud.com/tKF9S
Contrary to the media representation of a climate activist, people in the global South resist and fight climate change every day. Nevertheless, they are often excluded and marginalised, facing additional barriers to their activism. Their international visibility is often limited, despite the fact that there are many examples worldwide of groups and communities resisting projects with environmental impacts (see for example, the Environmental Justice Atlas). From the water defenders in Honduras to South Africa’s mining-affected communities, there are several examples of groups and communities fighting against environmental destruction and contamination.
Young people in particular are at the frontline of climate change. Climate change is, in many contexts, already a reality that youth cannot escape from and they are playing a key role in leading climate activism in countries in the Global South. In Uganda, for example, several climate action projects are led by young people, who invest their time and energy to raise awareness of climate change, protest for effective climate action, and demand global and local change (see here). Despite the several youth-led climate projects led by black youth, their voices are often erased from climate change debates. In the webinar, Fousseny shared his experience of climate activism in Mali and Munguzo talked about his experience in Uganda. Fousseny started climate activism very early and was introduced to activism by his uncle who was a farmer. He saw the ‘movement growing and the rebellion, and then became inspired to fight against climate change.’ Munguzo works daily with refugee people in the Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. He speaks about the struggle to access natural resources below:
https://on.soundcloud.com/do63c
The Unidos Project works to ensure that the needs of refugees are fulfilled and that sustainability goals are considered in any intervention (see here).
Institutional inertia
In our discussion around the importance of COPs over the last three decades, we came to the conclusion that the solutions that have been proposed are not enough to address the current climate crisis. Besides, the fact that parties participated in COPs does not mean that they will deliver the action they agreed to. History has shown that the change has been limited and often constrained by political leaders, particularly from the Global North. As mentioned by Maria in the webinar “we keep delaying radical change”. Overall, the measures that are being implemented are not enough and the process of implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation measures in the global South have been under-funded until now. Despite several promises and international agreements, rich countries, which are the most responsible for climate change, are not contributing. For example, the 100 billion dollars a year in funding promised to countries to mitigate climate change by rich countries has not been delivered. Most of this has been promised in the form of loans and has not been allocated to mitigate the effects of climate change. This has exacerbated debt injustice and put many more vulnerable people at risk. Additionally, stopping “fossil fuel” extraction, for example, is not seriously discussed in these COPs. ‘We need more radical and transformative change. Related to this there was an agreement that capitalism is the basis of the problem, including by the IPCC in one of its leaked reports (https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-09-02/the-ipcc-leaks-and-unbridled-capitalism/ ). It was also highlighted that we need to do much more for certain countries, such as those in the African continent. We need to prioritise support and solidarity to those countries and communities being affected by climate change. This is a matter of climate justice!
