ABSTRACT
The 2009 Copenhagen Accord put the grievances of Africans on the map for international activists, as it became clear that internal advocacy would run up against the United Nations negotiating forum’s limits. Not only was the G77+China lead negotiator, Lumumba Di-Aping, foiled when demanding justice, but elite Africans (including from Pretoria) made alliances with the North. The PanAfrican Climate Justice Alliance began its periodic protests in Copenhagen, and since then its 1,000+ member organizations have stressed both the high-emitting countries’ obligations to victims – such as 2019 Cylone Idai survivors owed a ‘climate debt’ – as well as the need for Africans to halt their own high-carbon energy strategies and extractive megaprojects. The latter struggles are becoming acute at various sites, including in South Africa, where myriad environmental justice campaigns have emerged, albeit not yet a climate justice movement. In South Africa and every African country, the potentials for drawing in newly energized youth activists and helping to shape an ideology of climate justice – not just climate action – are enormous, in part because the urgency of emissions cuts and adaptation is becoming evident.
