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Call for Papers online workshop: "Intersectionality and Climate Justice in Eastern Africa"

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Call for Papers online workshop: "Intersectionality and Climate Justice in Eastern Africa"
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Call for Papers:

Intersectionality and Climate Justice in Eastern Africa

Online Workshop, Wednesday 9 August 2023

The project "Gender, Generation and Climate Change" (GENERATE) in the School of Geography, together with the Leeds University Centre for African Studies, is hosting an online workshop on 9 August 2023, for which we welcome proposals.

Eastern Africa is experiencing the climate crisis more acutely than most places on the planet. From increasing dry seasons, heatwaves, drought, and food insecurity, to flooding and mudslides, for countries across the region, climate change is an issue of today not of tomorrow. With the majority of countries in the region characterised as ‘low income’, they are less financially able to mitigate or adapt to climate shocks and slow onset changes. High (and growing) rates of poverty, gender inequality, unemployment, and health disparities serve to ensure climate change impacts are inequitably experienced. A focus on Eastern Africa thus provides an important and timely opportunity to look at the lived realities of the climate crisis today, offering a key place to learn from and explore questions and issues relating to the inherent structural inequalities of climate change and claims for a ‘right to development’, as well as efforts to curb environmental catastrophe and level the global playing field. This includes questions of loss and damage, social and disaster justice, growing environmental social movements, green(er) urbanism, social inclusion and equity, and the formation, adoption, and implementation of new national climate change legislation.

This workshop aims to explore in more depth an intersectional approach to climate justice and climate action issues across Eastern Africa. Geographically, Eastern Africa is understood broadly - including, but not limited to, the 7 countries of the East African Community (DRC, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda). It aims to demonstrate how the climate crisis cannot and should not be seen in isolation from other social, political, and development issues and imperatives. Potential themes that could be addressed through papers include:

  • Intersections between climate, environmental and social justice;
  • Gender justice: gender, sexuality, and climate change;
  • Climate knowledge production and access in/from/about Eastern Africa;
  • Climate (in)justice in/across different settings (urban, rural);
  • Disproportionate climate impacts on marginalised communities (people living with disability, refugees and asylum-seekers, women and girls, older people, Indigenous people and ethnic minorities, etc);
  • Displacement and (forced) migration resulting from climate change, environmental shifts, and disasters, and impacts of climate change on forcibly displaced people;
  • Inter/Generational (in)justice, intra/cross generational solidarity, age-based experiences of climate change;
  • Social movements, resistance, and civil society responses to the climate crisis;
  • Theoretical and conceptual interventions on environmental and climate change;
  • Local conceptions of resilience and coping strategies to environmental and climate change (shocks, disaster, slow onset);
  • Indigenous knowledges, knowledge production, and decolonising climate justice in Eastern Africa;
  • Climate policy development and implementation within and across scales (regional, national, local);
  • Access to climate finance, including capacity to develop bankable projects, distribution of finance and debt (loans and grants);
  • Loss and damage, climate negotiations, and climate reparations.

To apply to present at the workshop please send an abstract (200-300 words), biography (100-200 words), and contact details by Friday 14 July 2023 to Dr. Neil Crawford at n.j.w.crawford@leeds.ac.uk with the subject line: ‘CLIMATE JUSTICE IN EASTERN AFRICA’. We will communicate with the authors of selected abstracts soon after. The workshop will include keynotes by Dr. Mithika M. J. Mwenda (Executive Director, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance) and Ms Ineza Umuhoza Grace (Founder and CEO, The Green Protector & Co-founder and Global Coordinator, Loss and Damage Youth Coalition). Presentations and papers should be original and not previously published.

The workshop will be hosted online (Zoom) by the GENERATE Project and the Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) at the University of Leeds (UK). It is being organised by Dr Neil Crawford (University of Leeds), Dr Katie McQuaid (University of Leeds), Ms Susan Nanduddu (African Centre for Trade and Development), and Dr Elvin Nyukuri (University of Nairobi).

The workshop is free to attend and open to academics, policy-makers, graduate students, and civil society professionals. Applicants based in Eastern Africa are warmly encouraged to apply. Following the workshop, we are planning for an edited collection (either an edited book and/or journal special issue), and our editorial team will work closely with presenters to develop their work and ideas for publication.

If you have any questions, wish to discuss your abstract prior to submission, or wish to be kept up to date with the project, please contact Dr Crawford: n.j.w.crawford@leeds.ac.uk