Climate Change and the Postcolonial

Contributing scholars engaging with Southern African contexts challenge hegemonic climate paradigms. They employ pluralistic strategies that respect diverse epistemologies and advance decolonised discourse. Drawing from the humanities and social sciences, this multidisciplinary collection demonstrates how moving beyond dominant frameworks enables more inclusive approaches to environmental governance rooted in local epistemologies. The volume reveals the importance of understanding environmental justice through postcolonial perspectives. Essential reading for researchers, scholars, and students committed to transformative climate governance, this work emphasises the urgent need to honour diverse epistemologies while addressing environmental challenges in ways that resist colonial impositions on climate discourse.

Aïda C. Terblanché-Greeff is a senior lecturer at the School of Philosophy, North-West University, South Africa. Her interdisciplinary research interests include African philosophy (applied; empirically-engaged), cross-cultural studies (social self-construal; temporality), disaster studies, and environmental ethics.

Elisabeth Alm holds a Master’s in Social Sciences (specialising in global studies). Her research interests focus on the social impacts of climate change, decoloniality, and global power structures, informed by extensive field research across sub-Saharan Africa.

Jörn Ahrens is Professor of cultural sociology with focus on the transformation of culture at the University of Giessen, Germany, and Extraordinary Professor of social anthropology at North-West University, South Africa. His main research areas are: sustainability, nature, and the Global South; popular culture (film, comics); society and violence; and critique of modernity.