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Climate Justice in the Majority World: Vulnerability, Resistance, and Diverse Knowledges
- 2023
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Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This edited collection explores a diverse range of climate (in)justice case studies from the Majority World – where most of humans and non-humans live. It is also the site of the most severe impacts of climate change and home to some of the key solutions for the climate crisis. The collection brings together 12 chapters featuring the work of over 30 authors from around the globe. The impacts of climate change are disproportionately affecting individuals, communities, and countries in the Majority World who historically have contributed little to rising global temperatures. The 12 chapters focus on a range of cross-cutting themes, demonstrating both individual and collective experiences of climate change and struggles for achieving climate justice from the Majority World. This includes activism, resistance, and social movement organizing in India and Brazil; lived experiences and understandings of frontline communities in Bangladesh and South Africa; consequences of and responses to disasters in Mozambique and Puerto Rico; and contested accounts, narratives, and futures in the Maldives and Pakistan, among other topics. By adopting a decolonial lens, this book provides rich empirical content, insightful comparisons, and novel conceptual interventions. It foregrounds climate justice from an intersectional perspective and contributes to the ongoing efforts by scholars and activists to address epistemic injustice in climate change research, policy, and practice. It will appeal to undergraduate and graduate-level students, academics, activists, policymakers, and members of the public concerned with the impacts and inequalities of climate change in the Majority World.
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| 2. |
- Michael, Kavya, 1985, et al.
(author)
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INTRODUCTION: Climate Justice beyond the Minority World - Towards Decolonial Knowledges
- 2023
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In: Climate Justice in the Majority World: Vulnerability, Resistance, and Diverse Knowledges. - 9781000921298 ; , s. 1-17
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Climate justice emerged in the 1990s within activist and later academic circles as a concept that challenged the mainstream scientific and technocratic discussions around climate change. Climate justice itself was pioneered by social movements in the Minority World, and as such, many studies of its use and application remain focused on countries in Europe and North America. Critiques are calls for decolonizing the thinking around, and actions in response to, climate change, which frequently rest on ‘alternative’ knowledges and values. This chapter provides a brief overview of the state of the art and knowledge gaps in the field of climate justice and explains why there is need to use the term ‘Majority World’ over various alternatives. Despite offering valuable contributions to climate change and justice scholarship, they can often lack the authorship experience and the professional connections needed to gain access to, and be published by, ‘top-tier’ journals and press.
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| 3. |
- Mikulewicz, Michael, et al.
(author)
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CONCLUSION: Towards Justice in Climate Justice Research - Feedback from Chapter Contributors
- 2023
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In: Climate Justice in the Majority World: Vulnerability, Resistance, and Diverse Knowledges. - 9781000921298 ; , s. 255-263
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This chapter underscores the need for epistemic justice in the climate justice literature that, despite its commitment to equity, still in many ways elevates certain bodies of knowledge over others. Ethnic diversity and discrimination within the Majority World may impose intersectional inequities on some climate justice scholars and the populations they study and partner with. One reflection of the masculinist nature of academia is the relatively low prioritization of community-based research so essential for climate justice knowledge production and the concomitant lack of interest in - and funding for - climate justice-related work among key stakeholders, including governments, media, and many academic circles. Change is urgently needed in how research is funded, how international partnerships operate, how national governments see climate justice issues and those who study them, how research is published, and how scholars across the world communicate.
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| 4. |
- Ahlborg, Helene, 1980, et al.
(author)
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Thirty-five years of research on energy and power: A landscape analysis
- 2024
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In: Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. - 1879-0690 .- 1364-0321. ; 199
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The urgent need to mitigate climate change and decarbonise the energy sector brings the risk that wider social and environmental concerns about the sustainability of energy systems are neglected. Countries may achieve decarbonization goals while reproducing or worsening the unequal distribution of access, opportunities, costs and burdens that is inherent to current energy systems. This study is motivated by the tension between visions for change towards sustainable energy systems and historic and contemporary inequities on the ground. The study contributes a quantitative, global-scope overview of existing research that places energy users and their lives at the centre of analysis for inclusive and equitable transitions. It further identifies the themes, concepts and perspectives that dominate scholarly debate and analyses the presence and relative influence of work that explicitly considers relations of power. The stepwise review uses the Scopus database and multiple bibliometric tools, covering the period until June 2022. It adopts a novel approach to identify dominant and marginal topics, geographical contexts and theoretical lenses employed including the uptake of critical social science approaches. The results indicate that dominant studies fail to engage critically with relationships of power. Even within the debate on “energy poverty”, work based in critical theory approaches account for less than seven percentages of the total body of work. For work on “energy justice” and users, four percentages of publications account for gender. The dominant language is technical and depoliticized. The study identifies research gaps and promising avenues for further research.
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- Arora-Jonsson, Seema, et al.
(author)
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Just Transitions: Gender and Power in India’s Climate Politics
- 2023
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Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This book turns critical feminist scrutiny on national climate policies in India and examines what transition might really mean for marginalized groups in the country. A vision of “just transitions” is increasingly being used by activists and groups to ensure that pathways towards sustainable futures are equitable and inclusive. Exploring this concept, this volume provides a feminist study of what it would take to ensure just transitions in India where gender, in relation to its interesting dimensions of power, is at the centre of analysis. With case studies on climate mitigation and adaptation from different parts of India, the book brings together academics, practitioners and policymakers who provide commentary on sectors including agriculture, forestry and renewables. Overall, the book has relevance far beyond India’s borders, as India’s attempt to deal with its diverse population makes it a key litmus test for countries seeking to transition against a backdrop of inequality both in the Global North and South. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate policy, gender studies, sustainable development and development studies more broadly.
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| 6. |
- Arora-Jonsson, Seema, et al.
(author)
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Voices from the field: Working for a just climate in India
- 2023
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In: Just Transitions: Gender and Power in India’s Climate Politics. - 9781000969580 ; , s. 74-92
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this chapter, Seema Arora-Jonsson discusses the question of just transitions with a cross section of people working for a better climate in India: a former civil servant and climate negotiator who has long worked with climate issues, a practitioner/activist working on just transitions in an NGO, an activist with a long history in the women’s grassroots movements, a gender activist who has worked extensively with climate change at the international level as well as a networker who maintains a platform for corporations for climate finance. We discuss the context in which transitions are taking place, go on to current policy approaches and its gendered aspects and the structural challenges and barriers of policy approaches to a just transition. In the overarching gloom, we also discuss the rays of hope, and we end with what we believe is needed to take the world into a sustainable and climate-resilient place.
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| 7. |
- Michael, Kavya, 1985, et al.
(author)
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A conceptual analysis of gendered energy care work and epistemic injustice through a case study of Zanzibar’s Solar Mamas
- 2024
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In: Nature Energy. - 2058-7546. ; In Press
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Energy and climate transitions bear an inherent risk of replicating historically embedded unjust gendered norms in the current energy regimes. Positioning our work within critical feminist scholarship, our study emphasizes the embedded nature of energy technologies within respective socio-economic, institutional and cultural contexts. We use a combined lens of care and epistemic injustice to examine the case study of Solar Mamas in Barefoot College Zanzibar, highlighting the nuanced interplay of power relations in decentralized energy transitions. This approach helps comprehend and value gendered energy care work as involving skilled labour in everyday life. Our findings illustrate the need for energy transitions research, policy and practice to be deeply informed by lived experiences, diverse practices of care within the energy webs and valuing of multiple voices. We argue that interventions prioritizing care and knowledge in decentralized, locally managed energy provisioning have the potential to disrupt established gender relations.
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| 8. |
- Michael, Kavya, 1985
(author)
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Barriers and enablers of gender-just climate action: Examples from India
- 2023
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In: Just Transitions: Gender and Power in India’s Climate Politics. - 9781000969580 ; , s. 226-242
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This chapter examines the possibilities for a just transition centring around questions of gender justice. Through a comparative analysis of Solar Mamas, the Bhungroo Irrigation Technology and the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), it responds to recent calls in energy and climate change literature for addressing institutionalised gendered injustices in the climate/energy policy landscape. The chapter seeks to understand institutionalised gendered norms around women’s role as care providers and their impact on providing gender-just energy solutions. The analysis of the case studies depicts that the state mechanisms to engender energy policies and programmes in India like the PMUY often internalise long-standing gender roles where women are seen as primarily responsible for the provision of “care” while initiatives that are emerging at grassroots level through bottom-up approaches like the Solar Mamas programme or the Bhungroo Irrigation Technology are largely cognisant of the everyday realities of women’s lives as care-providers, work towards disrupting gendered norms around care, and envisage a role for women beyond that of carers.
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| 10. |
- Michael, Kavya, 1985, et al.
(author)
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Examining vulnerability in a dynamic urban setting: The case of Bangalore’s interstate migrant waste pickers
- 2018
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In: Climate and Development. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1756-5529 .- 1756-5537.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Understanding the causality of vulnerability is difficult to do and consequently has received insufficient attention. Root causes of vulnerability need to be understood and addressed to support adaptation that addresses climate risk and inequality. This paper contributes to this by examining vulnerability from a structural perspective for the case of interstate migrants from West Bengal working as waste pickers in Bangalore’s informal squatter settlements. It also throws light on how understanding structural vulnerability can help to emphasize social justice concerns while adapting to climatic risks. The research, using qualitative methods, examines complex intersections between a multitude of factors such as climate change, agrarian distress, exclusionary patterns of urbanization and the resultant lack of recognition that shapes and reshapes the vulnerability of a certain group of people. Our findings emphasize the compelling need for vulnerability and adaptation research to focus more on understanding inequality if improving justice is a concern. This focus on justice is insufficiently prioritized in climate change adaptation work.
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