Beyond Contestation: Climate Justice Across Continents

The concept of climate justice is rooted in the wider environmental justice movement, which dates back to the landfill protests of 1978 to 1982 in Warren County against the dumping of highly toxic waste in a poor and predominantly African-American community. Its central tenet is that climate change impacts different individuals and groups unequally and disproportionately, among them Indigenous communities.

This movement has grown over the years, becoming central to international global climate debates and negotiations, and influencing international principles, practices, and policymaking. Although the concept has not been exempt from controversy, it has led to significant victories, such as the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund in 2022.

But Indigeneity is also a disputed concept.

The UN, for example, does not have a definition of who Indigenous peoples are. However, it describes them as having "a historical continuity with a given region prior to colonization and a strong link to their lands. They maintain, at least in part, distinct social, economic and political systems. They have distinct languages, cultures, beliefs and knowledge systems. They are determined to maintain and develop their identity and distinct institutions, and they form a non-dominant sector of society.”

In the African context, the term has an even more contentious background. For example, under most European colonial regimes, people classified as “native” or “Indigenous” were subject to the provisions of the Indigenous Code, which considered them inferior beings and subjected them to systemic racism, marginalization, denial of fundamental rights, forced labor, and restrictions on movement. This has led to the term “Indigenous” acquiring primitivist connotations on the continent.

Today, some groups on the continent, such as the San or the Maasai, have been recognized in international fora as “Indigenous peoples.” However, most states have been reluctant to acknowledge claims to rights based on Indigeneity since gaining independence. After all, they argue, all black Africans are Indigenous to the continent.

Land, or rather a collective approach to land, is central to the demands of the Indigenous movement. In Latin America, this vision challenges the extractivist logic and export of primary goods, relegated as the only mode for developing countries to participate in the global economy. In Brazil, for example, protecting Indigenous land is one of the most decisive measures for mitigating the effects of climate change, including preserving the Amazon.

Much like in South America, African states are moving towards carbon-intensive development pathways fueled by unsustainable forms of natural resource exploitation, often leading to gross inequality and marginalization. However, in Latin America, Indigenous populations legally and effectively own land that is disputed by large-scale economic activities such as mining and monoculture farming. In contrast, in most African countries, land is owned by the state in the name of “public interest,” while traditional customary governance systems regulate land use at the community level.

Hence, multiple legal systems co-exist within a single geographical space, known as legal pluralism, in which local communities acquire rights to use land through “concession.” However, a combination of ineffective policies, lack of law enforcement, and weak state control over the territory means that customary institutions do de facto regulate land use in rural areas, but without a legal basis to do so. The consequences of this system are well documented: people are left vulnerable to various forms of land dispossession, often resulting in flagrant human rights violations, as seen in the cases of northern provinces in Mozambique and the Niger Delta.

It is disputable that categorizing people in Indigenous terms in Africa is the correct approach to addressing climate justice, particularly redistributive justice. This is especially pertinent in countries where the colonial logic of identity governance and social differentiation persists (resulting in the reproduction and perpetuation of institutionalized forms of marginalization and exclusion) and where attempts to create a common national ground for equal treatment (not anchored on ethnicity or religion) of citizens have repeatedly failed.