Maasai people.

Decolonizing Climate Governance: Why Indigenous Knowledge Remains on the Margins of Global Climate Action

by with No Comment CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

As climate change intensifies, global climate governance increasingly acknowledges the value of Indigenous knowledge while continuing to marginalize Indigenous peoples from meaningful decision-making processes. In this insightful commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines the paradox at the heart of contemporary climate governance: Indigenous knowledge is celebrated as essential for climate adaptation and environmental stewardship yet remains largely excluded from the institutions that shape climate policy. Drawing on debates surrounding epistemic injustice, decolonization, and democratic inclusion, Dr. Solaja argues that climate governance must move beyond symbolic recognition toward genuine power-sharing and knowledge co-production. The article highlights why the inclusion of Indigenous voices is not only a matter of justice but also a prerequisite for more effective, participatory, and sustainable climate futures.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

Climate change is increasingly being labeled as the defining challenge of the twenty-first century, and although global climate governance now generally acknowledges the significance of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems, their voices still remain marginalized from decision-making bodies. States, scientists, multinational bodies and technical processes, that privilege Western epistemologies, continue to dominate international climate negotiations. The result is that Indigenous knowledge is both celebrated publicly and yet hardly translated into practice in climate policy design, implementation and governance, and consequently raises issues of representation, knowledge justice and climate governance future.

The emerging awareness of Indigenous knowledge in the discourse around climate change is rooted in a widespread understanding that the environmental challenges necessitate plural knowledges to find solutions to climate change impacts. Indigenous peoples manage or hold tenure over approximately one-quarter of the Earth’s land surface, much of which is of critical importance for biodiversity conservation and serves as a significant carbon store (Orlove et al., 2023). Research consistently demonstrates that Indigenous peoples are rich holders of knowledge, possessing profound and extensive understandings of the environment and ecosystems derived from thousands of years of interaction with their local surroundings (Lam et al., 2020; Turner et al., 2022). This knowledge encompasses biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, sustainable resource use, and the maintenance of ecosystem resilience (Akalibey et al., 2024; Dorji et al., 2024).

However, the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge often remains largely symbolic; the issue is not merely one of inclusion but of power. Climate negotiations generally take place within institutions that, by their very design, determine whose knowledge is considered valid, whose expertise is valued, and whose voices shape policy outcomes. In this context, Indigenous knowledge is frequently treated as a supplement to scientific knowledge rather than recognized as an equally legitimate epistemology for understanding and addressing climate change (Latulippe & Klenk, 2020). This unequal positioning of knowledge has come to be understood as epistemic injustice—a systematic undervaluation of particular forms of knowledge and ways of knowing, as well as of the people who hold them (Byskov & Hyams, 2022). Such injustice occurs when Indigenous environmental observations are ignored, when local knowledge is extracted without meaningful participation and inclusion, or when Indigenous representatives are consulted without being granted decision-making authority. In doing so, it reproduces colonial frameworks of knowledge production and governance, perpetuating the long-standing exclusion of Indigenous peoples from environmental decision-making processes.

There exists a great paradox: while climate agreements increasingly recognize Indigenous knowledge, the governance frameworks that marginalize Indigenous participation remain largely unchanged. Both the Paris Agreement acknowledges the importance of Indigenous knowledge for climate adaptation, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has established the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP) to strengthen Indigenous participation. Yet Indigenous peoples continue to receive only limited recognition in terms of meaningful participation in decision-making arenas, often serving merely as observers while states retain ultimate decision-making authority over climate-related issues.

In line with this observation, Carmona et al. (2024) demonstrate significant disparities in the integration of Indigenous rights and knowledge within Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the key instruments of the Paris Agreement, despite references to Indigenous peoples in some countries’ climate plans. This suggests a substantial gap between the theoretical acknowledgment and the practical incorporation of Indigenous knowledge in climate policy and implementation.

This situation is also evident in Canada, where numerous initiatives led by Indigenous peoples draw upon ancestral knowledge alongside modern sustainability measures for environmental conservation. Nevertheless, Indigenous leaders have argued that state climate policy design lacks genuine consultation and power-sharing mechanisms with Indigenous communities (Bell et al., 2025; McGregor, 2021), revealing the extent to which participation does not necessarily guarantee influence in decision-making processes. In contrast, Indigenous knowledge systems in Africa play significant roles in climate adaptation.

Traditional institutions have developed various methods for coping with climate variability, generating knowledge that enables communities to adapt to environmental changes through diverse ecological resource-management techniques. However, this knowledge is rarely reflected in state-level climate adaptation policies, which tend to prioritize externally developed technical solutions (Makondo & Thomas, 2018; Chanza & De Wit, 2016), thereby reflecting ongoing postcolonial epistemological hierarchies (David, 2024).

These dynamics have important implications for policy design, as local climate challenges cannot be effectively addressed through broad scientific models that ignore specific ecological, cultural, and economic contexts. As Orlove et al. (2023) note, the unique understanding Indigenous peoples possess of local environments in the Arctic, for instance, has proven vital for the early identification of environmental changes, including shifts in ice conditions and wildlife migration patterns.

Efforts in the Arctic, along with various similar initiatives led by Indigenous peoples (Bell et al., 2025), further demonstrate the benefits of knowledge co-production—an approach that seeks to bridge scientific and Indigenous knowledge in environmental research and governance. The challenge lies in the fact that these knowledge systems are often treated as separate and incompatible when, in reality, sustainability transformations must draw upon the interaction of multiple forms of knowledge in ways that are equitably structured, as argued by Lam et al. (2020).

However, calls for the integration of Indigenous knowledge into climate governance are not without complications. Critics have raised concerns about the transferability of context-specific Indigenous knowledge within international governance mechanisms, noting that environmental knowledge generated within a particular ecological setting may not be readily applicable to other contexts. Others have expressed concerns about representation, emphasizing the diversity that exists within Indigenous communities and arguing that no single individual or organization can represent the entirety of Indigenous knowledge systems.

Additional controversies arise from the differences between the verification procedures of scientific inquiry and knowledge rooted in oral traditions, cultural practices, and lived human experience. These issues warrant careful consideration and appropriate responses. However, they do not justify the continued marginalization of Indigenous knowledge. Rather, they highlight the need for governance systems that foster communication, mutual learning, and fair access to diverse knowledge systems.

The question is not whether Indigenous knowledge should be incorporated into governance mechanisms, but rather how institutions can create conditions that support knowledge co-production while respecting both scientific and Indigenous ways of knowing.

Decolonizing climate governance represents efforts toward the alteration of institutions, decision-making processes, and knowledge systems that still favor Western scientific approaches and marginalize Indigenous ways of knowing and learning. It is an attempt not only to include but also to redistribute power, authority, and governance over knowledge. Decolonization of climate governance, therefore, is not simply about the participation of Indigenous people at global conferences; it is about how climate knowledge is constructed, validated, and applied. Indigenous representatives must participate in decision-making processes as rights holders instead of mere advisors; climate funds must be allocated to support projects led by Indigenous peoples; intellectual property rights should be respected; and Indigenous knowledge should be recognized as a valid epistemology. 

Calls for the decolonization of climate agreements, such as that of Reed et al. (2024), assert that strengthening Indigenous participation would bolster not only the legitimacy but also the efficacy of climate action and decision-making, among many other positive outcomes beyond what has traditionally been understood. Thus, the matter extends beyond climate issues and deep into questions of democracy, representation, and justice in governance.

The marginalization of Indigenous voices within global climate governance also raises important questions about contemporary forms of exclusionary governance often associated with technocratic and elite-driven policymaking. While climate negotiations increasingly claim to represent global interests, decision-making processes remain concentrated among state actors, scientific experts, and international institutions. This concentration of authority creates a democratic deficit that mirrors broader concerns in populism studies regarding representation, voice, and the exclusion of marginalized communities from policy processes. Indigenous demands for greater participation therefore reflect not only environmental concerns but also broader struggles for recognition, representation, and democratic inclusion.

The increasing magnitude of climate impacts will continue to demand innovative and contextual solutions, and in this regard, Indigenous peoples have proven to be adaptable and capable environmental stewards through millennia of interaction with and knowledge generation about their environments. Thus, for a sustainable future, climate governance must seek to go beyond nominal engagement and move toward true recognition of power-sharing and the pluralism of knowledges. Therefore, the decolonization of climate governance is not simply a matter of justice for Indigenous peoples, but also a necessary condition for creating more effective, participatory, and sustainable climate futures. Indigenous knowledges can no longer remain peripheral actors in the processes that determine climate futures if global climate governance is to be truly transformative.

 

References

Akalibey, S.; Hlaváčková, P.; Schneider, J.; Fialová, J.; Darkwah, S. & Ahenkan, A. (2024). “Integrating indigenous knowledge and culture in sustainable forest management via global environmental policies.” Journal of Forest Science.https://doi.org/10.17221/20/2024-jfs

Bell, E.; Tremblay, C.; Carodenuto, S.; Downie, B.; Dearden, P.; Kileli, E. O. & McDougall, S. (2025). “Indigenous knowledge-bridging to support ecological stewardship in Canada and Tanzania.” People and Nature, 7, 1139–1150. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70034

Byskov, M. F. & Hyams, K. (2022). “Epistemic injustice in climate adaptation.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 25(5), 1099–1115. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10301-z

Carmona, R.; Reed, G.; Ford, J.; Thorsell, S.; Yon, R.; Carril, F. & Pickering, K. (2024). “Indigenous Peoples’ rights in national climate governance: An analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).” Ambio, 53(1), 138–155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01922-4

Chanza, N. & Wit, A. D. (2016). “Enhancing climate governance through indigenous knowledge: Case in sustainability science.” South African Journal of Science, 112, 7–7. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2016/20140286

Dorji, T.; Moktan, K.; Tshering, K. & Wangchuk, T. (2024). “Understanding how Indigenous knowledge contributes to climate change adaptation and resilience: A systematic review.” Environmental Management, 74(3), 456–472. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-024-02032-x

Lam, D. P. M.; Hinz, E.; Lang, D.; Tengö, M.; Wehrden, H. & Martín-López, B. (2020). “Indigenous and local knowledge in sustainability transformations research: A literature review.” Ecology and Society, 25(3). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-11305-250103

Latulippe, N. & Klenk, N. L. (2020). “Making room and moving over: Knowledge co-production, Indigenous knowledge sovereignty and the politics of global environmental change decision-making.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 42, 7–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.10.010

Makondo, C. & Thomas, D. (2018). “Climate change adaptation: Linking indigenous knowledge with western science for effective adaptation.” Environmental Science & Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.06.014

McGregor, D. (2021). “Indigenous knowledge systems in environmental governance in Canada.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies. https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.148

Orlove, B.; Sherpa, P.; Dawson, N.; Adelekan, I.; Alangui, W. V.; Carmona, R.; Coen, D.; Nelson, M. K.; Reyes-García, V.; Rubis, J.; Sanago, G., & Wilson, A. (2023). “Placing diverse knowledge systems at the core of transformative climate research.” Ambio, 52, 1431–1447. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01857-w

Reed, G.; Alook, A. & McGregor, D. (2024). “Decolonizing climate agreements strengthens policy and research for all future generations.” Nature Communications, 15, Article 4810. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49143-x

Turner, N.; Cuerrier, A. & Joseph, L. (2022). “Well grounded: Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, ethnobiology and sustainability.” People and Nature. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10321

Data center campus.

Data and Drought: A Community Fights Back

by with No Comment CommentariesDigital-populismEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

As artificial intelligence drives an unprecedented expansion of data-center infrastructure, questions of climate sustainability, democratic accountability, and technological governance are becoming increasingly urgent. In this timely commentary, Dr. Heidi Hart examines the controversy surrounding Utah’s proposed Stratos Project, a massive AI data-center complex planned for a drought-stricken region of the American West. Moving beyond conventional debates about innovation and economic growth, Dr. Hart explores how concerns over water scarcity, environmental degradation, energy consumption, and surveillance technologies have galvanized an unlikely coalition of local residents. Bringing together insights on climate politics, technocracy, populism, and grassroots mobilization, the commentary highlights how resistance to AI infrastructure is creating new political alignments and raising fundamental questions about who gets to decide the future of technology, land, and democratic participation.

By Heidi Hart

In the steppe geography of northern Utah in the US, sagebrush carries a spicy, resinous scent after a rare rainstorm. Cattle ranchers eye the land for better grazing amid historic drought. A dark rock cluster marks a 500-year-old Indigenous burial site. The northern tip of the Great Salt Lake, where Robert Smithson’s famous Spiral Jetty once disappeared underwater, now resembles a moonscape. Toxic dust from decades of industrial pollution blows across the valleys toward the heavily populated foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. 

In this already stressed land, a hyperscale data center project – originally planned to be the largest in the world, at over twice the size of Manhattan – has drawn international attention. At a time when the UN is warning about the environmental costs (including and extending beyond greenhouse emissions) of AI infrastructure, a recent study has shown that most data centers are being proposed for drought-stricken lands, and US legislatures debate the economic benefits versus costs to local communities’ quality of life, the Stratos Project in Utah has become a flashpoint for imagining the future of AI ecosystems. An unexpected side-effect of these debates has been a growing grassroots protest movement across political divides, from rural Trump-voter communities in the US South to the NAACP.

The Stratos project in Utah, conceived by Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame and railroaded past any local or environmental review under the guise of military necessity, was first proposed at over 40,000 acres (62.5 square miles or 162 sqare kilometers). It would create a thermal load of close to 16 gigawatts or “the equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy … every single day,” according to Utah State University physics professor Robert Davies. With no existing electrical grid and plans to draw on the Ruby Pipeline for natural gas, the project would affect northern Utah’s already poor air quality and increase carbon emissions by 55% to 75%.  At or above 90 decibels, noise from data centers is notorious for causing hearing loss, insomnia, and even nausea in humans, not to mention the effects on wildlife in precarious desert ecosystems. 

The problem of water looms largest over the Stratos plan. Though the county government’s information site, which reads like marketing copy, estimates around 2,000 acre feet for year drawn from groundwater in a “closed-loop system,” that water is not an infinite resource, even in wetter periods, and environmental groups are only now making some headway in efforts to protect the shrinking Great Salt Lake. With global heating and atmospheric weather changes, the occasionally low-snow winters that have reduced spring runoff in the past could become the norm. Rapid population growth before and during the Covid years has also increased stress on Utah’s water supply. From irrigation and watering restrictions to the toxic dust problem, everyone in the crowded northern part of the state senses the scarcity. Add to this a massive power- and water-draining data complex, with its additional function as a surveillance machine, and locals have a reason to rise up. 

When the project was first announced earlier this year, Utah’s Republican governor Spencer Cox expressed enthusiasm for what O’ Leary called “Wonder Valley Utah” – and frustration with critics calling out the lack of review, discussion, and transparency. After finding that state leaders had approved a massive project that would affect their communities and ecosystems for generations to come, around 80 protesters confronted the Box Elder County Commission to decry lack of public input. The protests spread to the Utah State Capitol, where, on May 23, 2026, concerned citizens from across the political spectrum voiced their anger, as well as some humor about accusations that they were being paid by China. 

As a result of this pushback, and a poll finding that a majority of Box Elder County residents oppose the Stratos project, Governor Cox softened his stance in favor of public discussion and environmental review. O’Leary has agreed to scale down the project by 20,000 acres, a reduction by half. Still, local activists are not convinced. Nearly 700 protests have been filed with the Utah Division of Water Rights, a time-consuming process that has resulted in the withdrawal of two water rights applications for the data center. As of this writing, Box Elder County has approved a 180-day moratorium on data centers. 

The Stratos fight is far from over, but as in other US states, and in this one, where religious and political divides run deep, the data center threat has brought together unlikely collaborators. While not the form of populism that usually makes the news (the recent cage-fighting spectacle in front of the White House as a case in point), Utah’s anti-technocracy protest movement brings out cattle ranchers, university professors, hunters, eco-activists, churchgoers and nonbelievers, Republicans and Democrats. It’s hardly a cozy coalition, but it opens up a broader space for “the people” in a traditionally deep-red state. 

The movement also calls on Indigenous perspectives to ground its efforts. Darren Parry of the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation, interviewed for ECPS in 2021, has been a vocal opponent of the Stratos project, noting the Hansel Valley’s fragile ecosystem and rock-mound burial sites in the area. Parry has shared contrasting images of the high-desert valley (his own photograph) and the planned complex dominating the scene with glowing glass rectangles and steaming cooling towers. The sci-fi quality of the image is partly its point. AI can generate imaginary utopias or doomscapes, but it will take a messy, persistent human movement to keep the land itself alive.  

Cargo ship transporting containers of waste to a recycling facility. Conceptual image of global waste trade and environmental pollution. Photo: Evgeniy Parilov | Dreamstime.

Waste Sovereignty and Plastic Colonialism: Environmental Power and Populism in the Global Political Economy of Waste

by ArticlesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeJournal of Populism Studies

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Please cite as:
Solaja, Oludele Mayowa. (2026). “Waste Sovereignty and Plastic Colonialism: Environmental Power and Populism in the Global Political Economy of Waste.” Journal of Populism Studies (JPS). June 11, 2026.  https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000124



Abstract

Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental problems of the twenty-first century, but the governance of global plastic waste is remarkably unequal. Significant volumes of plastic waste from developed countries are exported to developing countries in the Global South, where waste management infrastructure and regulatory capacity are often limited. While this movement of waste across borders is frequently discussed in terms of recycling efficiency or waste management capacity, these transactions are deeply embedded in unequal power relations within the global political economy. This article proposes a theoretical framework called Waste Sovereignty Theory (WST), which explains how international waste trade reproduces environmental power asymmetries between exporting and importing nations. Drawing on political ecology, environmental justice, postcolonial environmental governance, and emerging scholarship on environmental populism, the paper conceptualizes transboundary plastic waste flows as a form of plastic colonialism in which the ecological costs of production and consumption in wealthy countries are displaced onto less powerful states. The article introduces a Waste Sovereignty Theory Framework (WST Framework) that links four key dynamics—plastic production, transnational waste trade, governance inequality, and sovereignty claims—to explain contemporary struggles over environmental authority in the Global South. Using illustrative cases from Southeast Asia and Africa, the article demonstrates how states and communities respond through waste import bans, stricter regulatory regimes, waste repatriation policies, and the promotion of domestic recycling industries. These responses are interpreted not only as efforts to reclaim environmental governance but also as expressions of environmental populism, whereby affected populations challenge environmental burdens perceived as imposed by distant political, economic, and technocratic elites. Waste sovereignty thus emerges as both a claim to environmental justice and a form of political resistance against unequal structures of global environmental governance. The article argues that addressing the global plastic crisis requires more than technological improvements in waste management; it demands institutional reforms capable of confronting the structural inequalities embedded in contemporary systems of production, consumption, and environmental governance.

Keywords: Waste Sovereignty, Plastic Colonialism, Environmental Populism, Global Waste Trade, Environmental Governance, Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, Circular Economy, Global South

 

By Oludele Mayowa Solaja

Introduction

Plastic waste constitutes one of the leading contemporary environmental problems in the 21st century. Over the last decades, production of plastics in the global South have rapidly increase from less than 1 million tons per year in the 1950s to more than 400 million tons in a year and rapidly growing international plastic waste trade networks (Geyer et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2021; Clapp, 2022). Although plastic waste is created around the globe, its environmental burden has been distributed unevenly, that is, wealthy industrialized countries ship vast amounts of their waste to the Global South countries whose institutions and capabilities are often unable to manage this commodity (Brooks et al., 2018; Clapp, 2021). This paper considers that what often appears as technical problems with waste management or efficiency of recycling, are the consequences of underlying structural power relations within political economy that shaped global politics of waste management.

The political ecology literature frames such dynamics within a politics of unequal access to environmental resources. International industrial and consumer economies are producing vast flows of unwanted materials whose disposal is often externalized, whereby they can find an outlet within the weaker regulatory systems found in some Global South countries, leading to environmental contamination and informal dumping and recycling networks (Pellow, 2018; Liboiron, 2021). This is a pattern of waste colonialism where environmental harm produced by global industrial capitalism can be displaced from wealthy consumer economies to the periphery through the waste trade (Pellow, 2018; Liboiron, 2021). This in turn constitutes ecological distribution conflicts, whereby environmental burdens and their subsequent harm fall unevenly between social groups and geographic territories (Martinez-Alier, 2002).

Emergent trends in international waste markets highlight the politicization of these dynamics. The closure of the Chinese market to the majority of foreign waste exports under the National Sword policy in 2018 led to the redirection of massive flows of plastic waste to countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, overwhelming the existing domestic waste management systems of these recipient countries. Consequently, governments from the Global South such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and a host of African states have since imposed new regulations and repatriated illegal shipments of plastic waste, showing the burgeoning politics of the waste system.

Most academic literature on the global plastic crisis frames plastic waste as a technical problem of recycling efficiency or waste management systems, however there is an important politics of why environmental problems and the burden of waste are distributed unevenly. More focus has not been paid to the issue of environmental sovereignty – a State’s/Community’s authority over their environmental resource system, including regulation of trans-boundary flows and their control over development pathways, as a source of environmental power and control within global waste flows governed by the trade regime, global corporate supply chains, and disparities in regulation.

This article theorizes the politics of global waste governance by developing the Waste Sovereignty Theory (WST), which frames global waste systems as arenas of political struggle over authority where States and communities contest the uneven distribution of ecological burden. Waste Sovereignty Theory framework links four key mechanisms-production, trade networks, disparity in regulation, and sovereignty claims-to illuminate the operation of environmental power within current waste regimes. Waste sovereignty, within WST, signifies the authority of States, communities and social movements to assert control over the management of waste systems, including import flows, domestic recycling industry development and environmental common preservation. 

In this article, waste sovereignty is defined as the capacity of states, communities, and social institutions to exercise political, ecological, and economic authority over the governance of waste within their territories. This includes the power to regulate transboundary waste flows, control domestic recycling infrastructures, determine environmental standards, and shape the economic systems through which waste materials are managed or transformed into resources. Within the Waste Sovereignty Theory Framework (WST Framework), waste sovereignty therefore represents a form of environmental authority through which political actors contest the unequal distribution of ecological burdens generated by global production and consumption systems.

The theory of Waste Sovereignty extends the field of environmental governance in three main ways; first, situating the plastic crisis within the politics of production, consumption and the externalization of environmental impact. Second, it develops the discourse of environmental justice by placing issues of ecological inequity alongside control over environmental governance systems. Third, it theorizes responses to plastic waste in the Global South as claims to sovereignty from the peripheries in the form of restrictions on imports, new legislation, domestic recycling industries development etc.

Therefore this paper answers the questions: how does global plastic waste trade create a power disparity and how can the Waste Sovereignty Theory frame the emergence of fights for environmental governance in the Global South? Showing the dynamics of the WST through cases from Southeast Asia and Africa, the paper argues that plastic waste has become a politically embedded global issue and its solutions need to transcend purely technical strategies of waste management and recycling, and include the politics of environmental power and sovereignty within the waste system.

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People live and sift through garbage at a waste disposal site in Lagos, Nigeria on November 22, 2019. Photo: Alexey Stiop / Dreamstime.

Decolonizing Populism Theory: Ecological Crisis, Informal Governance, and Democratic Claims in the Global South

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

This commentary by Dr. Oludele Solaja advances a compelling decolonial critique of populism by relocating its analytical center from ideology to material life. It argues that, in the Global South, democratic breakdown is experienced less through electoral conflict than through ecological failure—flooding, waste accumulation, and infrastructural neglect. In this context, environmental crisis becomes a language of political judgment and a site of democratic contestation. The study highlights how citizens respond by improvising governance, producing forms of “everyday sovereignty” that reconfigure legitimacy around performance rather than formal institutions. By foregrounding environmental citizenship and survival politics, the article calls for a fundamental rethinking of populism theory, emphasizing the material genesis of antagonism and the centrality of ecology in shaping contemporary democratic claims.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

When Ecology Becomes Politics

Democratic anxiety is being defined by populism everywhere today. With elections becoming increasingly polarized, institutions increasingly distrusted, and elites denigrated by citizens hungry for clear moral answers in an age of uncertainty, contemporary populism theory increasingly defines the crisis of democracy in terms of ideological confrontation between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” Influential concepts such as those of Cas Mudde and Ernesto Laclau define this process in terms of party politics, electoral struggles, and discursive clashes, strongly grounded in European experience. The rise of democratic contestation globally necessitates a reassessment of these ideas.

Citizens in many parts of the Global South do not often frame political resentment first and foremost in terms of party politics, immigrant threats or nationalist appeals. For them the crisis of democracy often occurs when streets become inundated, waste accumulates, sanitation collapses, water becomes polluted, food prices spike and the everyday fragility of survival in urban space defines the state’s responsiveness. Citizens experience this failure of government less as a constitutional crisis and more as a systematic material breakdown, turning ecology into language for political dissent.

This is a crucial insight because democratic legitimacy is increasingly negotiated in terms of environmental realities. When storm drainage becomes a source of flooding and waste management failures prevent sanitation, ordinary people perceive these as evidence of the abandonment of the populace, or of their lives being deprivileged by governing authorities. Such environmental breakdown becomes a source of moral judgment, casting doubt upon the moral authority of political elites.

The work of a growing body of scholars is showing that climate and ecological crisis is reframing populist narratives not only through established ideological distinctions. Some argue that the ideational framework of climate populism theory has already failed because it cannot accommodate the varied ways in which ecological grievance leads to different kinds of articulation across various institutions.

The implications are vast: the study of populism cannot be separated from the ecological reality with which it is increasingly tied.

Why Existing Theory Is Not Enough

The existing literature assumes that populist actors are largely capable of mobilizing symbolic opposition against rulers within relatively functioning institutions. In weak democracies the institutional framework is precarious, and the state can be rhetorically present, but materially absent. This creates a unique political terrain.

When institutions routinely fail to provide sanitation, safety and infrastructure, anti-elite discourse emerges less as a battle of ideologies and more as a concrete test of the performance of the state and democratic governance. Citizens criticize rulers not just for corruption, but because roads are impassable, waste remains undeposited and water and electricity do not function properly.

This kind of anti-elite sentiment, in this situation, does not always constitute a threat to democracy. Instead, it constitutes claims to practical citizenship. This is the point at which a decolonial critique must be introduced, for in weak democracies in the Global South the language of populism increasingly derives from everyday experience with ecological neglect.

Environmental Degradation as Democratic Testament

In places of rapid urbanization such as Lagos, Nigeria, environmental crisis has become the defining public face of democratic strain. Repeated flooding, collapsing drainage, rising sea levels, escalating waste accumulation and the spread of disease have increasingly defined the political experiences of urban inhabitants. A recent analysis of flood vulnerability in Lagos highlights how poor waste management, inadequate urban planning enforcement and a lack of community participation continue to undermine efforts to respond to climate risks, despite multiple state interventions. This demonstrates not simply administrative shortcomings, but a failure to provide unequal protection.

Environmental risk in Lagos and elsewhere is socially and materially distributed. Informally governed settlements and the poor suffer greater and more repeated ecological risks than more affluent neighborhoods, yet it is precisely these vulnerable communities that receive slower and poorer infrastructural responses from authorities. Ecology thus becomes a language of inequality and injustice.

The impact of class and settlement vulnerability on flood exposure is reflected in recent studies of urban spatial inequality in Lagos, demonstrating that environmental insecurity is inextricably linked to democratic exclusion. Ecological collapse thus acquires symbolic power: floodwaters signify state abandonment, waste streams become markers of inequality, and infrastructural failures translate into tangible accusations of undemocratic neglect. Citizens may not explicitly define these dynamics as “populist” framework, but the underlying logic is clearly so—a confrontation between the common people and a distant, selectively responsive, and morally indifferent government.

Informal Governance and Everyday Sovereignty

People rarely wait patiently when their formal institutions persistently fail. They improvise governance. Communities organize the cleaning of drainage ditches, youth groups coordinate waste disposal, street vendors pay for sanitation services, religious networks provide disaster relief, and neighborhood committees enforce rules that sustain survival infrastructures. This is not merely emergency survival; it is also a form of practice that demonstrates effective political authority.

This may be understood as everyday sovereignty: the transfer of legitimacy and power from a failing formal state to individuals and organizations that produce concrete solutions to community needs. In weak democracies, citizens increasingly trust those who demonstrate competence in managing crises to produce political order, rather than those who hold office but fail to deliver. This has profound democratic implications. Authority is no longer legitimized primarily by institutions but is increasingly validated by performance. Recent research in Lagos on struggles against displacement-driven urban restructuring shows how communities develop collective strategies to resist state interventions, contest policies, and articulate claims to political belonging as formal governance proves exclusionary.

This demonstrates a radical redistribution of democratic legitimacy from the state to citizens and communities. Waste itself, more than anything else, has become one of the most significant symbolic sites of democratic breakdown. It is immediate, material, accumulating, and unevenly distributed—settling where and when political neglect occurs and public disorder emerges. The prolonged presence of waste in public space signifies delayed state intervention, while its concentrated accumulation in poorer neighborhoods clearly articulates unequal treatment of citizens.

Waste thus emerges as a public inscription of political relations, where the accumulation and persistence of material residue represent not merely sanitation problems but a testament to the priorities governments set in service provision. This sense of abandonment and differentiated citizenship—captured in narratives such as “we contribute but are not protected” or “they rule but do not care”—mirrors populist discourse: the citizenry versus a distant state and ruling elites. Waste has therefore become not only a material problem but also a democratic issue, constituting a core site of political struggle over resource access and state responsibility. It demonstrates that environmental sociology and populist studies must engage more closely to account for the material genesis of antagonism—the very foundation of populism.

A Decolonial Perspective: Three Shifts Required in Populism Studies

For a theory of populism to be decolonized, it needs to abandon some established ideas:

i) Instead of viewing populism as an ideology of the people versus corrupt elites, a material approach to governance can frame political resentment. This recognizes that in fragile democracies, such feelings emerge not from abstract ideas of morality but from tangible experiences of infrastructural failure.

ii) The electoral arena needs to be widened to include the daily life of neighborhood politics, where claims to citizenship are made on the basis of practical survival mechanisms, not solely through party-led contests.

iii) Instead of a detached analysis of the “people,” the concept of environmental citizenship becomes crucial to understanding populism, as citizens engage in political struggle as part of a struggle over their own survival in an ecological context that increasingly determines who has rights and who has a claim to care.

These adjustments do not necessarily invalidate previous research in the field. Rather, they enable populism studies to engage with phenomena that extend far beyond what has until recently been considered “the political.” Increasingly, the theory of populism itself is being reshaped by the recognition of ecological dynamics; this process has arguably already begun in Europe, where ecological movements are contributing to new populist formations. The Global South, however, reveals an even more radical potential, because for its citizens, ecology is often not merely about ideology but about survival itself.

Why Now Is the Critical Moment

Democratic theory needs to acknowledge that political legitimacy is increasingly tied to how effectively the state responds to ecological challenges. In Europe, political disillusionment is fueled by the climate crisis, and the perceived indifference of governments only intensifies citizens’ perceptions of exclusion and corruption. The implications of populist struggles for the state’s capacity and functioning—at both local and international levels—are becoming evident worldwide. The effects are even more pronounced in weaker states, where democratic buffers are less robust and citizens may prioritize life-sustaining functions over procedural norms in demanding effective governance. This underscores that managing drainage systems, coastal defenses, and waste management can no longer be treated as peripheral issues.

Conclusion: Democracy Is Now Being Judged by Its Performance on Ecology

A decolonized approach to the theory of populism must address how it plays out on the ground in contexts where people navigate the daily crises of floods, waste, and uncertain service provision, and where ordinary survival politics are becoming increasingly central struggles that often define the state’s legitimacy in their eyes. It is no longer sufficient for democratic theorists to focus solely on elections and parliamentary institutions when seeking to understand the challenges confronting the globe. The crisis of democracy and the rise of populism in the Global South are, in many respects, a testament to the critical role of ecological and environmental realities in mediating and generating political conflict and claims in everyday life.

Disposal site in Lagos.

From Waste to Political Weapon: Informal Recycling and Survivalist Populism in Urban Nigeria

by Editor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomePolicy Papers

Urban waste governance in Nigeria reveals a critical yet overlooked nexus between environmental management, informality, and political legitimacy. This policy brief introduces the concept of survivalist populism to capture how structural exclusion within the informal waste economy generates distinct political subjectivities rooted in precarity, distrust, and disengagement. Despite underpinning material recovery and urban sustainability, informal waste workers remain marginalized, stigmatized, and criminalized—exposing a contradiction at the heart of state governance. The analysis demonstrates that exclusionary environmental regimes not only produce inefficiencies but also erode democratic legitimacy and risk fostering grievance-driven political mobilization. By advocating inclusive, circular governance frameworks, the brief positions environmental policy as a key site for democratic renewal, social inclusion, and the mitigation of emerging populist discontent.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja*

Policy Problem

In Nigeria, urban waste governance has remained an under-researched domain where the intersection of political contention, social marginalization, and emerging populist subjectivities can be observed. It is estimated that more than 32 million tons of solid waste are produced annually across the country, with approximately 13,000–15,000 tons generated daily by metropolitan Lagos alone, of which less than 40% is managed by formal waste collection systems (World Bank, 2020). This structural deficit has given rise to a vast informal waste sector, including scavengers, mobile waste traders, and community-based collectors, who constitute the backbone of material recovery systems—particularly for plastics and metals—thereby contributing to urban environmental sustainability.

Despite their indispensability for material recovery, the sector remains largely institutionally marginalized, socially stigmatized, and increasingly criminalized. This apparent contradiction—the necessity of these informal actors for material recovery alongside their political exclusion—points to a broader challenge in environmental governance at the nexus of urban informality and state legitimacy. Building on an urban political sociology perspective, alongside environmental governance scholarship, this policy brief argues that waste governance in Nigeria is fundamentally an issue of political legitimacy and citizenship at the urban level (Migdal, 2001; Davis, 2006).

Survivalist Populism and Urban Exclusion

This policy brief proposes the term survivalist populism to capture the emergence of political consciousness driven by structural exclusion in the informal economy. Survivalist populism describes a political orientation shaped by a lack of material security, institutional exclusion, and the daily struggle for urban survival. Distinct from programmatically oriented ideological populism and electorally driven populism, survivalist populism is affective, experience-driven, and rooted in the everyday conditions of survival.

In the informal waste economy, this type of political consciousness typically manifests through: (1) deep and entrenched distrust in state institutions; (2) narratives of neglect and exclusion; and (3) pragmatic avoidance of formal politics. This orientation signals a weakening of state legitimacy, as governance is often perceived as coercive rather than as a mechanism for welfare delivery. 

As Norris and Inglehart (2019) argue, such dynamics often reflect a sustained political backlash rooted in prolonged social insecurity and inequality affecting marginalized populations. Phrases such as “we are unseen by government,” commonly used by actors in the informal waste sector, convey a sense of injustice and represent a redefinition of political identity beyond formal politics. This aligns with studies of informality demonstrating how marginalized groups often construct their own systems of governance in the absence of adequate state engagement (Hart, 1973; Migdal, 2001).

Informality, Labor and Urban Survival

Nigeria’s informal waste sector provides employment for millions and is a cornerstone of the wider informal economy, which supports more than 60 percent of national employment. The sector comprises a diverse group of predominantly young, often vulnerable and economically deprived individuals excluded from the formal economy. Their employment conditions are characterized by extreme income volatility, with earnings frequently falling below minimum wage benchmarks. At the same time, work is marked by precarious health and safety conditions, as it is typically carried out without personal protective equipment and often involves encounters with state agents, leading to harassment, evictions, and displacement.

Paradoxically, these informal workers are integral to urban environmental governance processes, recovering well over 50 percent of plastics across several Nigerian cities, reducing pressure on landfills, and supporting local manufacturing value chains. This situation exemplifies what Davis (2006) describes as the “structural indispensability of the urban poor within systems that simultaneously exclude them,” reflecting a persistent, state-induced failure to integrate informal labor, even as it continues to be tolerated and relied upon.

Governance Failures and Democratic Risks

The systemic exclusion of informal waste workers results in significant governance and democratic risks. 

First, it reinforces the state’s dominant reliance on punitive, rather than inclusive, approaches to environmental governance by criminalizing participation in the sector. Informal waste picking is often banned or tightly regulated at the state level without providing viable livelihood alternatives. 

Second, enforcement-led approaches to environmental regulation erode state legitimacy, as interventions are primarily experienced as coercive rather than enabling, particularly among excluded groups (Migdal, 2001). 

Third, there are emerging signs of the political instrumentalization of exclusion and grievance, whereby marginalized groups are invoked in electoral rhetoric but excluded from substantive policymaking—a pattern that may transform social and environmental exclusion into a tool for political leverage. 

Finally, these dynamics generate environmental inefficiencies, as the marginalization of recyclers weakens waste sorting and recovery systems, thereby increasing pressure on landfills. Collectively, these processes risk fostering long-term political disillusionment and undermining stability in urban governance.

Policy Recommendations: Toward Inclusive Circular Governance

Achieving effective environmental governance requires a critical shift toward inclusive, circular economy frameworks that recognize informal labor as essential to urban environmental sustainability.

Formal Integration and Recognition: Relevant environmental agencies at both state and national levels should take measures to formally recognize and register workers in the informal waste economy and ensure their inclusion in urban waste management systems through collaborative arrangements and partnerships among the state, the formal sector, and informal waste actors.

Circular Economy Integration: Circular economy strategies at both subnational and national levels must clearly identify and define informal waste workers as central participants in sustainable waste management, with targeted incentive packages to support small recycling enterprises and strengthen informal material recovery value chains.

Social Protection Measures: Support for these workers should be complemented by a targeted system of social protection that provides access to essential services such as microcredit and health insurance, as well as structured livelihood development and transition support programs.

Participatory Governance Structures: Urban waste management authorities should develop and operationalize structured participatory mechanisms that provide informal waste workers with a platform for engagement and a voice in decision-making processes affecting their livelihoods and the environment.

Narrative Reframing and Public Recognition: The persistent social stigmatization of informal waste workers should be actively challenged through reframing their roles as valuable contributors to urban environmental sustainability, rather than as nuisances within the cityscape, by both state institutions and the media.

Policy Implications for Europe and the Global South

The findings from Nigeria’s informal waste sector offer important lessons for European policymakers transitioning toward a circular economy, as well as for cities in the Global South undergoing rapid urbanization, where informality remains integral to urban service provision, but policy responses often oscillate between marginalization and criminalization. In Nigeria, neglecting informal environmental actors not only undermines the efficiency of environmental systems but can also lead to significant political consequences, including alienation, disengagement, and the emergence of populist responses.

This case underscores for European actors—particularly in contexts of increasing migration, urban informalization, and the shift toward circular economy models—the imperative of designing inclusive governance mechanisms that integrate vulnerable labor into formal systems rather than pushing it to the margins. More broadly, the findings highlight the need to conceptualize environmental governance as a tool of social inclusion and political consolidation, not merely technical efficiency. Failure to implement such reforms is likely to deepen urban political disaffection and accelerate the rise of grievance-driven populist mobilization.

Conclusion

The crisis of waste management in Nigeria is a manifestation of the structural tension between environmental governance and democratic inclusion. The persistence of exclusionary waste regimes reinforces a survivalist populist orientation grounded in precarity and institutional marginality, which may contribute to political instability. Conversely, the inclusion of marginalized informal waste collectors in formal policymaking processes offers mutually beneficial outcomes in terms of environmental efficiency and democratic legitimacy, thereby repositioning waste governance beyond a purely environmental imperative toward a nexus for inclusive urban democracy.

 

(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria and Nonresident Research Fellow at the ECPS. 

 

References 

Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. Verso. London

Hart, K. (1973). “Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 11(1), 61–89. 

Migdal, J. S. (2001). State in society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another. Cambridge University Press. 

Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. 

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. 

World Bank. (2020). Nigeria: Enhancing solid waste management for sustainable urban development.

Ecuador Police

Security at What Cost? Punitive Populism and Democratic Trade-offs in Ecuador

by AuthoritarianismCommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeHuman Rights

In this commentary, Emilio Hernández examines Ecuador’s recent security crisis through the lens of punitive populism, offering a nuanced account of how crime control becomes intertwined with political legitimacy. Moving beyond conventional policy analysis, he demonstrates how states mobilize insecurity not only to justify coercive measures but to reshape the very logic of governance. By situating Ecuador’s militarized response within broader theoretical debates—from Bottoms and Garland to Simon’s “governing through crime”—the piece highlights how emergency discourse, symbolic action, and the construction of internal enemies converge to produce authority. Hernández’s analysis ultimately raises a critical question: when security becomes a political performance, what are the long-term costs for democratic institutions, rights, and accountability?

By Emilio Hernandez*

Security crises are rarely only about security. They are moments in which states redefine the boundaries of authority, recalibrate the balance between coercion and rights, and reconstruct their relationship with the public. In such contexts, crime ceases to be treated solely as a policy problem and becomes instead a central organizing principle of political action. The language of emergency, the visibility of force, and the promise of immediate control begin to shape not only how governments respond to violence, but also how they seek to be perceived. What emerges is not simply a shift in security policy, but a transformation in the political logic through which legitimacy is produced.

Ecuador provides a particularly illustrative case of these dynamics. Following a rapid deterioration of security conditions and the onset of a major crisis in early 2024, the government adopted a series of highly visible and coercive measures, including the militarization of public security, the expansion of punitive legal frameworks, and the articulation of a confrontational discourse centered on the identification of an internal enemy, often labeled as “terrorists” (Voss, 2024). 

These responses, while framed as necessary to restore order, also reconfigured the relationship between crime control and political authority. Rather than operating solely as instruments of crime control, these measures point toward a broader shift in governance, where punishment, coercion, and political communication converge. In this sense, Ecuador’s response can be understood as part of a wider turn toward punitive populism, in which the management of insecurity becomes inseparable from the construction of political legitimacy.

Punishment, Power, and the Politics of Insecurity

Moments of acute insecurity tend to reorganize the relationship between crime, politics, and state authority. In such contexts, criminality is no longer framed exclusively as a social problem to be addressed through technical or institutional responses. Instead, it becomes a central axis of political articulation, around which governments construct narratives of crisis, order, and control. As Jonathan Simon (2007) argues in his notion of “governing through crime,” crime increasingly operates as a framework through which political authority is exercised and communicated. A key feature of this transformation lies in the growing importance of visibility and immediacy. 

Political responses to insecurity are evaluated not only in terms of their effectiveness, but also in terms of their capacity to signal action, decisiveness, and control. As David Garland (2001) notes, contemporary crime control strategies are deeply embedded in a political logic that prioritizes responsiveness to public anxieties, often privileging symbolic action over expert-driven policy. In this sense, punitive measures acquire a dual function: they operate both as instruments of policy and as mechanisms of political communication.

It is at the intersection of crime control and political communication that the concept of punitive populism becomes analytically useful. Originally conceptualized by Anthony Bottoms (1995) and further developed by David Garland (2001) and John Pratt (2007), punitive populism refers to the political mobilization of crime and punishment in ways that appeal to public sentiment while expanding the scope and severity of penal intervention.

Crucially, as Elena Larrauri (2006) suggests, these dynamics are not merely a response to public demand but are actively shaped and amplified by political actors themselves. Under these conditions, the appeal of punitive action lies less in its long-term effectiveness than in its capacity to provide immediate reassurance and to align political authority with perceived public expectations. Punishment, in this sense, becomes not only a tool of control, but a central mechanism in the construction of political legitimacy.

From Crisis to Exception

Ecuador’s recent security crisis emerged from a rapid and profound transformation in patterns of violence, driven by the expansion and fragmentation of organized criminal groups, as well as the erosion of state control over key territories and prison systems. After years of relatively low levels of violence, homicide rates increased dramatically between 2020 and 2023, positioning the country among the most violent in the region (UNODC, 2023; Voss, 2024). This escalation culminated in early 2024 with a series of highly visible and coordinated events, including prison uprisings, attacks on public institutions, and the escape of a high-profile criminal leader, Adolfo Macías from a maximum-security prison, which exposed the limits of state capacity and intensified public perceptions of insecurity. 

The government’s response took the form of a series of exceptional measures that went beyond conventional crime control strategies. These included the formal declaration of an internal armed conflict, the expanded use of the military in domestic security roles, and the legal reclassification of criminal groups as terrorist organizations (International Crisis Group, 2025). 

At the same time, these policies were embedded within a broader transformation of legal frameworks and political discourse, in which insecurity was increasingly portrayed as an existential threat demanding immediate and decisive action. This approach has also relied heavily on the sustained use of emergency powers. According to the Ecuadorian Conflict Observatory (2025) some key provinces, including Guayas, Los Ríos, Manabí, and El Oro remained under states of exception for approximately 82% of the first two years of President Daniel Noboa’s administration, allowing the military to support policing functions while suspending certain constitutional protections.

Although these measures initially received broad public support and were associated with short-term reductions in violence, their longer-term impact has been more ambiguous. Levels of insecurity have remained persistently high, and in some cases have intensified, raising questions about the sustainability of this approach (International Crisis Group, 2025; Voss, 2026).

Reframing Crime as War

Crucially, these developments did not simply transform Ecuador’s security landscape; they redefined the political meaning of crime. The government’s framing of the crisis as an “internal armed conflict” marked a decisive shift from a criminal justice approach to a war-based logic of governance, in which crime is no longer treated as a social phenomenon but as an existential threat. This reframing enabled the expansion of executive power and the normalization of exceptional measures, while simultaneously constructing a clear moral boundary between “law-abiding citizens” and criminal actors, portrayed as enemies of the state. 

In this context, security policy became not only a tool for controlling violence but also a central mechanism for demonstrating political authority. The visibility of coercive action, including military deployment, mass arrests, and punitive reforms, served to signal decisiveness and control, reinforcing the government’s claim to legitimacy. Rather than being evaluated solely in terms of effectiveness, these measures functioned as political performances, aligning state authority with public demands for order and protection. As recent analyses suggest, the government’s “war on gangs” has struggled to produce sustained control, instead contributing to cycles of violence and instability (Dudley, 2025; Newton, 2026).

Mechanisms of Punitive Populism and Political Legitimacy

The Ecuadorian case shows that punitive populism operates through a set of mechanisms that translate insecurity into political authority. Rather than simply responding to crime, these mechanisms reshape how it is governed and communicated. First, crisis conditions enable the expansion of executive power. The declaration of an internal armed conflict facilitated the adoption of exceptional measures and the suspension of ordinary legal constraints, contributing to the normalization of emergency governance (Observatorio Ecuatoriano de Conflictos, 2025). 

Second, public security has become increasingly militarized. The deployment of the armed forces in domestic roles reinforces a war-based understanding of crime, privileging confrontation over institutional or preventive approaches. 

Third, political discourse constructs criminal actors as “internal enemies,” often labeled as terrorists. This framing simplifies complex dynamics into a moral binary, legitimizing punitive responses and aligning political authority with public fears (Pratt, 2007). 

Finally, punishment functions as a form of political communication. Visible and immediate measures, such as mass arrests and harsher penalties, signal control and decisiveness, often prioritizing symbolic impact over long-term effectiveness (Garland, 2001). These dynamics also carry heavy electoral implications. President Daniel Noboa’s re-election in 2025 occurred in a context shaped by sustained militarization and emergency governance, suggesting that punitive strategies can generate political legitimacy through visibility and immediacy.

Normalization of Emergency and the Costs of Punitive Governance

However, the expansion of punitive populism raises important concerns for democratic governance. Measures initially justified as temporary responses to crisis, such as states of exception and military involvement in policing, risk becoming normalized, blurring the line between extraordinary and ordinary rule. This process reshapes the balance between security and rights. When insecurity is framed as an existential threat, restrictions on due process and legal safeguards are more easily justified and publicly accepted. Over time, this can weaken institutional oversight and reduce the capacity of democratic systems to limit executive power. 

At the same time, reliance on punitive strategies as a source of legitimacy may narrow the space for alternative responses. Governments become incentivized to prioritize visible and immediate action over long-term institutional solutions, reinforcing a cycle in which political authority depends on the continued performance of control.

Ecuador’s recent crisis illustrates how insecurity can be transformed into a central mechanism of political governance. Punitive populism operates not only through policy, but through the visible exercise of authority and the construction of legitimacy. As similar dynamics emerge elsewhere, understanding how crime is politically mobilized becomes essential for assessing the future of democratic governance.

 

(*) Emilio Hernández is an Ecuadorian lawyer and PhD candidate in Criminology at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). His research focuses on punitive populism, criminal policy, and the relationship between security crises, political narratives, and justice systems.

 

References

Bottoms, A. (1995). “The philosophy and politics of punishment and sentencing.” In: C. Clarkson & R. Morgan (Eds.), The politics of sentencing reform (pp. 17–50). Clarendon Press.

Dudley, Steven. (2025). “How organized crime shaped the agenda of Ecuador’s presidential elections.” InSight Crime. February 5, 2025. https://insightcrime.org/news/organized-crime-agenda-ecuadors-presidential-elections/

Garland, D. (2001). The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. University of Chicago Press.

Newton, Christopher; Manjarrés, Juliana; Cavalari, Marina and Macías, Luis Felipe Villota. (2026). “2025 homicide round-up.” InSight Crime. March 11, 2026. https://insightcrime.org/news/insight-crime-2025-homicide-round-up/

International Crisis Group. (2025, November 12). Paradise lost? Ecuador’s battle with organised crime (Latin America Report No. 109). https://www.crisisgroup.org/rpt/latin-america-caribbean/ecuador/109-paradise-lost-ecuadors-battle-organised-crime

Larrauri, E. (2006). Populismo punitivo… y cómo resistirlo. Jueces para la Democracia, (55), 15–22.

Observatorio Ecuatoriano de Conflictos. (2025). Ecuador en llamas: Conflictividad y seguridad en Ecuador[Report]. https://www.llamasuce.com/_files/ugd/7c86d8_532216924def4fb8a8d7845c0609cd1f.pdf

Pratt, J. (2007). Penal populism. Routledge.

Simon, J. (2007). Governing through crime: How the war on crime transformed American democracy and created a culture of fear. Oxford University Press.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2023). Global study on homicide 2023. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/2023/Global_study_on_homicide_2023_web.pdf

Voss, Gavin. (2024) “Gamechangers 2024: Ecuador finds victory elusive in ‘war on gangs’.” InSight Crime.December 27, 2024. https://insightcrime.org/news/gamechangers-2024-ecuador-finds-victory-elusive-war-gangs/

Voss, Gavin. (2026). “From airstrikes to cooperation: Will the “new phase” of Ecuador’s drug war deliver?”InSight Crime. March 31, 2026.  https://insightcrime.org/news/airstrikes-cooperation-will-the-new-phase-of-ecuadors-drug-war-deliver/

Lagos, Waste, Nigeria.

Survival Populism: How Environmental Crisis Fuels Democratic Distrust in the Global South

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja introduces the notion of “survival populism” to capture how environmental crisis and material insecurity are reshaping democratic politics in the Global South. Moving beyond conventional ideational approaches, the article foregrounds lived experiences of hardship—linking fuel price shocks, flooding, energy insecurity, and inflation to moral claims about fairness, state responsibility, and distributive justice. Through the case of Nigeria, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how climate-related disruptions and policy reforms converge to erode institutional trust and reconfigure political contestation. Rather than rejecting climate policy per se, citizens contest its unequal burdens. The article thus reframes democratic distress as rooted in distributive conflict, offering a compelling framework for understanding how ecological crisis fuels new forms of populist mobilization and legitimacy crises.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja*

In much of the Global South, the politics of survival and the politics of environmental crisis have become deeply intertwined. What were once distinct policy domains—the politics of fuel prices, flood mitigation, food inflation, waste accumulation, and energy insecurity—have converged into a single, lived experience of persistent hardship. For millions of citizens, the environmental crisis is not primarily defined by climate reports, international negotiations, or adaptation frameworks, but by submerged homes, rising transport costs, prolonged electricity outages, disrupted livelihoods, and escalating prices for basic goods.

Within such contexts of livelihood insecurity, ecological degradation takes on political meaning. Citizens come to see hardship not just as the result of misfortune or climatic fluctuation, but as an instance of unequal protection, institutional neglect and democratic distance. Under such conditions, public politics enters a new phase: a populism of survival emerges.

“Populism of survival” names a distinct mode of political interpretation that links environmental and economic distress to moral claims about state responsibility, fairness, and sacrifice. It departs from classical theories of populism by foregrounding the lived experience of hardship. Unlike the variants often associated with populist mobilizations in the Global North and East—typically structured around a binary opposition between “the people” and “the elite”—populism of survival is rooted in citizens’ experiences of material insecurity. Fuel becomes political when rising prices constrain mobility and limit access to basic goods; flooding becomes political when relief is inadequate or unevenly distributed; waste becomes political when its unequal management deepens social inequalities and disproportionately endangers already vulnerable populations.

In such contexts, public anger arises not only from opposition to environmental policy reforms but also from citizens’ everyday moral intuitions about who bears the costs of environmental disruption, who is required to pay, and who is protected. The relationship between climate policy and democratic legitimacy begins to erode when policies are perceived as non-distributive or unfair. Increasingly, the roots of climate populism lie in conflicts over how the costs and benefits of environmental transition are allocated. As Harrison (2025) observes, “across many settings, opposition to environmental reforms may stem not from a rejection of climate policies per se, but from opposition to the inequities of how their costs are distributed.”

An illustrative example of these dynamics can be found in Nigeria, where the government removed fuel subsidies in May 2023 and framed the resulting increase in fuel prices as a necessary macroeconomic adjustment. Public discourse surrounding the policy quickly became highly politicized, as rising fuel costs contributed to significant inflation and tightened household budgets. While state officials justified the reform in terms of fiscal discipline and economic rationalization, many citizens interpreted it through a moral lens: why should those at the bottom struggle to make ends meet while those with access to power remain insulated from such burdens? As Gbadebo (2025) argues, public responses to subsidy removal were shaped not only by the material consequences of economic hardship but also by concerns over governmental credibility and the plausibility of promised developmental outcomes.

These processes were intensified by other long-standing environmental and structural vulnerabilities and crises that now affected a wider portion of society than in past years. Following the floods that devastated numerous states—destroying livelihoods, homes, and arable lands—rising costs merged with food insecurity and frequent blackouts to form an inseparable social and ecological predicament. The state could no longer frame this predicament as exclusively “natural” or solely as the outcome of a natural disaster or poor market conditions. The experience was one of combined, cumulative crisis, and the credibility of the state in addressing such predicaments is tied to its performance on both fronts.

Flooding has, in particular, emerged as a major site of citizen dissatisfaction and a potent factor driving democratic distress. Displaced communities that have lost homes and productive capacity immediately feel cheated when the amount or distribution of government aid seems to reproduce and reinforce existing patterns of social inequality, and they begin to ask why state assistance appears uneven across communities and is not delivered to them preferentially. Climate policy has entered a phase in which state legitimacy is judged not solely in terms of its objectives or rationale, but also in terms of the effectiveness and fairness of its management of combined environmental and social threats.

Studies such as those by Okonkwo and Ezenwegbu (2024), which find that subsidy removal in Nigeria sparked significant concern among citizens who lacked a clear understanding of mitigation strategies or social protection, as well as analyses of the success and failure of fossil-fuel subsidy reform across various settings by Droste et al (2024), indicate that, when it comes to distributing the burdens of adjustment policies effectively, “technical argumentation alone has rarely been able to overcome such deeply seated mistrust.” The need for state institutions to earn citizens’ confidence through fairness, reciprocity, and demonstrable competence is therefore crucial in contexts with lower levels of public trust.

These issues are exacerbated in countries such as Nigeria, which suffer from chronic failures in infrastructure provision. Hussainzad and Gou (2024) show, for instance, that informality places the burden of adapting to ecological threats onto already existing socio-ecological inequalities. The populism of survival therefore cannot be interpreted solely as a product of irrational or ideological anti-state discourse, but as a request for a visible display of state competence. It requires public recognition from the state that it is aware of how these crises disproportionately affect ordinary citizens and is therefore prepared to demonstrate fairness and protection when such crises occur. 

It may or may not amount to explicitly anti-government discourse; but at its core, it expresses a demand for visibility. What citizens seek is not just state intervention, but a demonstration of its commitment to justice when addressing both economic pressures and the demands of adapting to the climate crisis. These developments are interpreted by populists as a crucial and opening field of study centered on real, survival-oriented daily experiences, rather than on the ideologies and leaders of state actors. The main dilemma for democratic governments in the coming decade will be less about acknowledging that an environmental crisis is underway than about fairly distributing the costs of confronting it.

 

References

Droste, N.; Chatterton, B. & Skovgaard, J. (2024). “A political economy theory of fossil fuel subsidy reforms in OECD countries.” Nature Communications, 15, 5452. 

Gbadebo, A. D. (2025). “The political economy of fuel subsidy removal: Governance and sustainable development in Nigeria.” Journal of Governance and Administrative Reform, 6(1), 1–18. 

Harrison, L. (2025). “Climate populism: the limits of the ideational and discursive approaches.” Environmental Politics, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2025.2591469

Hussainzad, E. A., & Gou, Z. (2024). “Climate risk and vulnerability assessment in informal settlements of the Global South: A critical review.” Land, 13(9), 1357. 

Okonkwo, A. E., & Ezenwegbu, J. C. (2024). “Removal of petrol subsidies and its impact for democratic governance in Nigeria.” Nnamdi Azikiwe Journal of Political Science, 9(3), 38–47.

Gas-Nigeria

When Fuel Prices Turn Political: Trust, Climate Reform, and Everyday Populism in Nigeria

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

This commentary examines how fuel pricing in Nigeria has become a central site of democratic contestation, linking economic reform to everyday political experience. Drawing on recent scholarship, Dr. Oludele Solaja shows that the removal of fuel subsidies is interpreted less through macroeconomic logic than through lived realities—rising transport costs, food inflation, and declining purchasing power. In this context, fuel policy functions as a visible test of state credibility and fairness. The analysis highlights how “everyday populism” emerges as citizens frame reforms through moral distinctions between suffering publics and detached elites. Crucially, the study argues that climate and fiscal reforms cannot succeed without trust: where institutional credibility is weak, even economically rational policies risk generating political backlash and deepening democratic discontent.

Dr. Oludele Solaja*

In Nigeria, fuel isn’t simply a commodity but perhaps one of the most immediate points through which Nigerians engage with the state. Changes at the pump influence transport prices, the distribution of food, the nature of informal work, substitutes to electricity, household coping mechanisms. Any significant change at the pump is rapidly translated through market and commuters’ routes, domestic budgets, turning fiscal policy into political experience. Consequently, fuel pricing has evolved into perhaps the most visible site of democratic validation and of state-society trust (Gbadebo, 2025; Okonkwo & Ezenwegbu, 2024). 

The lifting of a long-standing petrol subsidy as part of recent reforms re-ignited an ever recurrent and sensitive national debate around governance, fairness and burden-sharing. The declared rationale for subsidy removal was correction of unsustainable fiscal spending, drain on public finances and constraint on welfare and infrastructure investment (Gbadebo, 2025). Nevertheless, macroeconomic rationales never fully determine political meaning. In the view of many Nigerians, what is primarily being assessed in post subsidy withdrawal policy aren’t ratios in macro-economic indicators, but transport fare hikes, food price volatility, diminishing purchasing power and pervasive uncertainty; studies found mitigation measures to be inadequate and unevenly distributed, which compounded distrust in the government (Gbadebo, 2025; Okonkwo & Ezenwegbu, 2024). 

This dilemma reveals the more important sociological aspect of the problem: economic reform easily gains political meaning in fragile trust situation. Populism is not merely about elite discourse or electoral tactics, but also everyday interpretation where citizens divide the social world along the moral lines of “normal citizens in suffering” and “detached politicians.” Petrol pricing is one aspect where it comes into the citizen vocabulary as its impact is immediate, transparent, and social inequal (Yang et al., 2021; Moerenhout et al., 2021). Rather than seeing it as the market correction, for many citizens the rising of petrol price is viewed as an indication of their anxieties over issues of justice, elite benefit and the credibility of the state. 

Public conversations often return to questions such as: Why must austerity begin with ordinary households? Why do reforms demand sacrifice where visible political restraint appears limited? These questions contribute to what may be called everyday environmental populism — a form of public meaning‑making in which environmental and economic reforms are judged through moral experiences of inequality and institutional betrayal (Gbadebo, 2025). While classic fuel subsidy literature focuses on economic costs and distributional effects, political economy research highlights that reform success depends on public trust and the social contract between state and citizens (Yang et al., 2021). 

The contradiction is clear: long‑term fiscal rationality collides with short‑term social hardship. In principle, subsidy removal may improve efficiency and reduce distortions in consumption. But in an unequal society with fragile institutional credibility, citizens encounter “energy transition” through transport costs, generator fuel, food inflation, and daily mobility (Esekpa, 2024). 

Within an urban environment, such as Lagos, rises in fuel price can rapidly influence commuter patterns, market costs and flow of informal economy money. In peri-urban and rural settings electricity is already unreliable, with generators being extensively used. Here price of fuel is likely to define the profitability of a micro business. In a local study within Nigeria, increases in fuel price are seen to correlate with economic suffering and an increase in the cost of living, therefore reinforcing the public opinion that the burden of reforms is primarily on the common man (Abaddah, 2025). 

This explains why trust becomes central to policy legitimacy. Historical memory matters: earlier reforms were often accompanied by promises of safety nets, infrastructure improvements, or welfare expansions that many citizens believe were never fully realized. Consequently, new fuel adjustments are interpreted not in isolation but against accumulated experiences of unfulfilled government commitments and governance shortfalls (Okonkwo & Ezenwegbu, 2024). 

Public reactions in both formal surveys and public commentary reflect this complex interpretation. A nationally representative household study finds that opposition to fuel subsidy reform is strongly linked with beliefs about government corruption and capacity to deliver compensatory programs; respondents were more likely to support reform only where they believed in transparent governance and effective social protection (Yang et al., 2021). 

There is also a profound communication gap in Nigerian fuel governance. Policy announcements often emphasize fiscal necessity while underestimating how reforms are emotionally and morally received. Citizens rarely oppose reform simply because they reject technical economics; rather, they resist because they doubt institutional fairness. This creates fertile ground for populist framing and political contestation around trust and governance (Gbadebo, 2025; Yang et al., 2021). 

The political symbolism is intensified by Nigeria’s oil‑dependent identity. In a major oil‑producing country, public expectations remain shaped by the belief that resource wealth should translate into broad social benefit. When hardship deepens in an oil-rich economy, citizens often interpret such contradictions politically. Research on global subsidies also shows that fuel subsidy reforms often generate political controversy where institutional quality is low and trust weak (Droste et al., 2024). 

While some assessments confirm that reducing subsidies can yield macroeconomic benefits, these gains do not automatically produce democratic legitimacy where hardship expands faster than visible welfare delivery. The result is a politics of resentment, where state actions are judged through everyday experiences of inequality rather than abstract fiscal reasoning (Gbadebo, 2025). For this reason, fuel policy should be understood not merely as economic reform but as democratic communication. The challenge is not only whether subsidy should exist, but whether citizens can trust that reform burdens are socially shared, publicly justified, and institutions remain accountable (Yang et al., 2021). 

This is where Nigeria’s climate politics becomes especially instructive. The democratic sustainability transition in developing democracies can no longer be carried out through technocratic sequencing. It will demand overt distribution, convincing social protection and credible assurance that burdens are not unilateral (Gbadebo, 2025). Fuel becomes politicized in the sense that it encapsulates a variety of societal fears including inequalities, citizenship, institutional trust and the moral narrative of the state itself. Therefore, the sociology of petrol prices illustrates how the politics of environment is evaluated by “the governed,” in relation to everyday politics of trust, fairness and public meaning (Yang et al., 2021; Esekpa, 2024). 

The lesson here is stark: climate and fiscal reforms implemented without democratic trust are politically dangerous, even when economically defensible. For the citizen in Nigeria asks the basic and obvious question of who bears the cost, who reaps the reward, and to whom should believe (Gbadebo, 2025; Okonkwo & Ezenwegbu, 2024).

 

(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is an Environmental Sociologist and Developmental Scholar based in Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria. His research focuses on environmental governance, climate policy, and everyday political populism in African contexts. He is a Nonresident Research Fellow at the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) and has published extensively on climate governance, citizen trust, and socio-political interpretations of environmental reforms. 

 

References

Abaddah, G. A. (2025). Effect of fuel subsidy removal on the Nigerian economy: Implications for households in Nigeria. BIMA Journal. https://journal.pdmbengkulu.org/index.php/bima/article/view/1984

Droste, N., Chatterton, B., & Skovgaard, J. (2024). A political economy theory of fossil fuel subsidy reforms in OECD countries. Nature Communications, 15, 5452. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49835-4

Esekpa, O. I., Ekarika, W. A., & Njama, G. J. (2024). Economic implications of fuel subsidy removal in Nigeria: Challenges and prospects. Journal of Public Administration, Policy and Governance Research.https://jpapgr.com/index.php/research/article/view/131

Gbadebo, A. D. (2025). The political economy of fuel subsidy removal: Governance and sustainable development in Nigeria. Journal of Social Political Sciences, 6(3), 206–224. https://doaj.org/article/e97ce91a0aff459a9106ff8fc6cff551

Okonkwo, A. E., & Ezenwegbu, J. C. (2024). Removal of petrol subsidies and its impact on democratic governance in Nigeria. Nnamdi Azikiwe Journal of Political Science, 9(3), 38–47. https://najops.org.ng/index.php/najops/article/view/267

Yang, J., Moerenhout, T., & others. (2021). Fuel subsidy reform and the social contract in Nigeria: A micro‑economic analysis. Energy Policy, 156, 112336. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521002068

People walk along a flooded road after heavy rain in Lagos, Nigeria.

When Floods Become Political: Disaster Relief, Democratic Trust, and Everyday Environmental Populism in Nigeria

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

In this insightful commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja reconceptualizes recurrent flooding in Nigeria as a site of political contestation rather than merely an environmental crisis. Introducing the concept of “everyday environmental populism,” the piece shows how lived experiences of disaster, unequal relief, and institutional failure generate bottom-up political claims that reshape democratic trust. Drawing on case studies from Delta, Anambra, and Niger states, the analysis demonstrates how citizens’ responses—from grassroots mobilization to digital dissent—reconfigure perceptions of state legitimacy. Situated at the intersection of environmental governance and populism studies, this commentary advances a novel framework for understanding how climate-related risks can catalyze political agency and redefine state–society relations in vulnerable democracies.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

In Nigeria, recurring floods have moved beyond being environmental disaster to become political events that shape relations between citizens and states and influence democratic trust. In the context of recent floods and uneven relief, this commentary introduces a new political concept-everyday environmental populism-to conceptualize citizens’ bottom-up political claims rooted in everyday experience of environmental hazards, institutional inadequacies, and inequitable disaster relief delivery. 

In contrast to elite-driven claims, everyday environmental populism emerges from lived experiences of vulnerability in the face of environmental disasters and from citizen-centered complaints about institutional shortcomings, which in turn generate bottom-up political dynamics. The states of Delta, Anambra, and Niger provide illustrative case studies, showing how floods stimulate civic engagement, trigger institutional critique, and reshape popular evaluations of state legitimacy. 

Situated within the broader frameworks of environmental governance, climate security, and democratic legitimacy, this commentary argues that flood disasters are transformative political events that generate bottom-up agency in Nigeria. It also discusses the implications for policy and academia, as well as for community-led resilience in environmentally vulnerable contexts.

Conceptualizing Everyday Environmental Populism

In Nigeria, devastating floods recur, with the 2022 floods alone displacing more than 1.4 million people and wreaking widespread damage to infrastructure, livelihood and housing (Agbiboa, 2024; Solaja et al., 2020). More than mere destruction, they represent the confluence of environmental hazard and political accountability. Political response—how it is delivered, and how resources and infrastructure are distributed and allocated—serves as a barometer of the state’s democratic legitimacy. Existing research has already linked environmental hazards such as recurrent floods to public critique, collective agency, and political attitudes (Obatunde, Akanle, & Solaja, 2025; Barnett, 2001; Dalby, 2013).

Populism research has generally focused on elite-led constructions opposing “the people” to “the elite” (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Extending this tradition, the concept of everyday environmental populism is introduced here as “citizens’ collective understanding and articulation of political claims shaped by their experiences and interpretations of environmental risk, disaster-relief inequalities, and institutional failures” (Solaja et al., 2020; Solaja, 2025). While elite populism is framed against political actors/elites, the idea of everyday environmental populism foregrounds ordinary citizens whose everyday experiences of vulnerability lead to complaints and grassroots political action which then fuels the distrust against political figures.

This conception centers on the agency of citizens, as they challenge the political status quo, express their expectations for accountable and equitable disaster responses and seek state actions beyond the traditional structures of politics (Obadare, 2020; Solaja, 2025).

Figure 1: Everyday Environmental Populism: How Flood Catches Political Capital.

This diagram illustrates how floods trigger citizens’ responses and shape political opinions, ultimately influencing levels of public trust in the state and in its policy formulation.

Floods and Democratic Trust in Nigeria

Repeated floods expose critical failings in Nigeria’s disaster response and governance structures, thereby politicizing environmental disasters (Adebayo, 2018; Agbiboa, 2024). More broadly, the scale of such disasters can undermine citizens’ confidence in political institutions (Barnett, 2001; Dalby, 2013). 

In Nigeria, successive floods have consistently triggered similar public reactions, as affected citizens cope with material losses while evaluating the adequacy of government responses. When state intervention is inconsistent, delayed, or inequitable, declining democratic trust leads citizens to rely on community-based assistance or to express dissent through social media, public meetings, and civil society organizations (Solaja et al., 2020; Solaja, 2025). Even prior to state involvement, citizens often self-organize, cultivating forms of autonomous political agency that can, in turn, shape public perceptions of state legitimacy (Obatunde, Akanle, & Solaja, 2025).

Citizens’ Response and Political Opinion

As illustrated in Figure 1, community mobilization in the initial stages of a flood event constitutes the foundation of everyday environmental populism, as citizen-led relief and response processes shape public political opinion and perceptions of the state’s democratic credentials. Grassroots relief initiatives often emerge in response to the absence or inadequacy of state intervention. In flood-affected areas, community leaders frequently assume responsibility for organizing shelters, disseminating alerts, and mobilizing local volunteers to assist victims, thereby demonstrating forms of self-reliance in disaster management (Solaja et al., 2020; Solaja, 2025).

These actions are inherently political, as they prompt evaluations of state responsiveness, challenge governmental priorities, and articulate demands for accountability. The internet serves as a platform where individual grievances coalesce into collective claims, transforming environmental crises into indicators of trust in the democratic system. In this sense, they exemplify everyday environmental populism, with citizens initiating forms of political mobilization from below (Obadare, 2020; Solaja, 2025).

Policy and Governance Challenges

It is crucial to address floods as political problems requiring preventive, equitable, and citizen-oriented governance. Such response mechanisms should include robust early warning systems, as well as transparent processes for the disbursement of funds and the allocation of resources to affected communities (International Rescue Committee & EU, 2025; Barnett, 2001; Solaja et al., 2020). Neglecting governance dimensions of disaster risk management fuels citizen distrust and intensifies public discontent. Conversely, equitable relief and fair governance can reinforce the legitimacy of democratic institutions (Dalby, 2013; Solaja, 2025).

Scholarly and Theoretical Contribution

The contribution of this commentary to populism studies and environmental governance lies in framing environmental disasters as triggers of political contestation. Through the concept of everyday environmental populism, it argues that lived experiences of disaster—driven by environmental threats—can empower citizens with the agency to resist injustice and challenge governmental actions (Solaja et al., 2020; Obadare, 2020).

The concept calls for further research into how environmental hazards shape citizens’ political attitudes and how such bottom-up agency influences the democratic legitimacy of state structures. Beyond political dynamics, it also intersects with debates on sustainability and the circular economy, opening new avenues for community-based initiatives—such as recycling plastic into productive materials through projects like EcoBalls and other entrepreneurial models (Solaja, 2025).

Conclusion: Politics in the Water

Floods are not merely natural disasters; in Nigeria, they constitute defining political events that shape the relationship between the state and its citizens, as well as perceptions of governmental legitimacy and responsiveness. The way citizens interpret state responses influences their assessment of whether democratic governance can deliver efficient, accountable services and provide support in times of crisis. Everyday environmental populism offers a useful framework for understanding these dynamics, highlighting how citizens’ responses are shaped by their exposure to environmental threats and by perceived inadequacies in governmental management (Solaja et al., 2020; Obadare, 2020).

There is a need to strengthen anticipatory governance, integrate citizen participation into flood management, and ensure that relief resources reach affected communities without being filtered through partisan interests. From an academic perspective, more extensive research is required to examine the political impacts of environmental hazards on mobilization, citizenship, and the pursuit of democratic accountability in flood-prone societies worldwide (Solaja et al., 2020; Obadare, 2020; Barnett, 2001).

 

References

Adebayo, B. (2018). “Nigeria overtakes India in extreme poverty ranking.” CNN.

Agbiboa, D. E. (2024). “Deep waters: Flooding and the climate of suffering in Nigeria.” PS: Political Science & Politics.

Barnett, J. (2001). The meaning of environmental security: Ecological politics and the United Nations. London: Zed Books.

Dalby, S. (2013). “Climate change and the security state: Critical perspectives.” Security Dialogue, 44(3), 191–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010613481291

International Rescue Committee & EU. (2025). Strengthening flood preparedness in Nigeria.

Mudde, C., & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Obadare, E. (2020). Everyday politics in Africa: Publics, grievances, and popular engagement. Cambridge University Press.

Obatunde, B. A., Akanle, O., & Solaja, O. M. et al. (2025). “Doing sociology in Nigeria.” International Journal of Sociology, 16(1), 14–26. https://doi.org/10.13169/ijs.16.1.0014

Solaja, M.O., Awobona S., & Adekanbi, O.O. (2020). “Knowledge and practice of recycled plastic bottles (RPB) built homes for sustainable community-based housing projects in Nigeria.” Cogent Social Sciences, 6(1), 1778914. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2020.1778914

Solaja, O.M. (2025). “EcoBall as a sport-based intervention for community engagement, behavioural change, and sustainable solutions to plastic pollution.” Discovery Environment, 3, 186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44274-025-00347-y

Young African girl.

Algorithmic Environmental Populism and the Digital Politics of Waste in Africa

by CommentariesDigital-populismEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

Dr. Oludele Solaja’s analysis introduces the concept of “Algorithmic Environmental Populism” to illuminate how digital platforms are reshaping the politics of waste across African cities. Moving beyond conventional policy-centered approaches, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how environmental degradation—from plastic pollution to urban flooding—has become a site of algorithmically mediated political contestation. In this emerging landscape, complex ecological crises are reframed into morally charged narratives of blame, privileging visibility, outrage, and immediacy over systemic understanding. By linking populism theory with digital governance and environmental politics, the article offers a novel framework for understanding how platform logics transform ecological grievances into potent political forces. It is an essential contribution to debates on populism, digital media, and environmental governance in the Global South.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

Environmental politics is now occurring not only at policy and infrastructure levels, but also through algorithms—from the clogged drains of Lagos to flood-prone Accra to landfills in South Africa. Environmental degradation has become a politically charged phenomenon on social media, and the sensational, outrage-driven, and immediate nature of these platforms has created an environment where narratives of blame outpace formal, institutional action. I refer to this new phenomenon as Algorithmic Environmental Populism, and I argue that digital infrastructure has become paramount in the formation, circulation, and contestation of ecological grievances.

The environmental crisis is no longer merely a management problem but a digitally mediated political language across the African continent, in which grievance, blame, and claims to power or moral legitimacy are performed. Plastic pollution, floods, burning dumpsites, and informal recycling have entered platform ecologies within which, according to a range of criteria, the most intense, visible, and confrontational content receives algorithmic attention. From this combination emerges a condition in which the environmental crisis is abstracted from complex systemic causes and reframed as a direct moral confrontation between “the people” and villains: polluters, corrupt elites, those who ship waste to Africa, and absent governments. In this process, platform algorithms prioritize the most engaging framing rather than the most policy-relevant one (Zeng & Schfer, 2023; Heidenreich et al., 2022).

The concept offers a way of extending understandings of populism and digital media, by foregrounding the environmental as a key site of algorithmically mediated political struggle. Classical theory on populism deals with the ideological construction of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite,’ while the infrastructures through which populist rhetoric is dispersed have been historically overlooked. Algorithmic Environmental Populism instead draws focus to platform logics, showing how they shape the contours and narratives of ecological complaint. By this it builds on research on algorithmic governance, the increasing role of algorithms in policy perception and the legitimacy of state power (Parthasarathy & Rajala, 2023).

In African cities the role of algorithms in producing a political context for waste is further amplified by its material presence on everyday life. Clogged drains, plastic-choked lagoons, burning dump sites and litter, produces and feeds readily available data streams, which produce, or a “condition of constant possibility” for data to be recorded and transmitted, resulting in environmental breakdown becoming rapidly politicisable. Take, for example, Nigeria. When the Lagos State government implemented restrictions on single-use plastics in 2025, environmental considerations took a back seat to narratives of bias, and selective policy enforcement. Viral image of floodwater pouring through plastic-clogged drains fed accusatory commentary that blamed the state, turning environmental degradation into a performance of political betrayal. 

Although it is true that a massive volume of plastic waste is annually dumped in Lagos State, these digital conversations tend to flatten the systems behind environmental degradation into morally legible pronouncements of blame and victimhood, which are amplified in the digital domain for emotional impact, rather than for systemic nuance (Couldry & Mejias, 2023). 

The significance of such arguments for politics in Africa is that these stories become diagnostically central. In such cases, a multiple-layered system of production, consumption, municipal service provision and global trade are collapsed into stark oppositional narratives because it is the only way in which environmental problems can be successfully broadcast within an algorithmic environment, where visibility takes priority over complexity. As digital media research shows, what gets amplified is content that triggers reactions: outrage, pity, and the assignment of blame. 

Similarly, we can observe this in Kenya where political activism is closely tied to moral pronouncements. Though debates exist surrounding extended producer responsibility, green economy initiatives, and refill systems; their manifestation in the digital space, in an effort to capture attention and elicit reaction, tends to focus on “blame-allocation” rather than the mechanics of institutional responsibility between citizens, corporations, and the state. Floods in Kenya’s urban centers of Nairobi and Mombasa provided highly visual and charged contexts to exacerbate these dynamics, producing further blame-oriented discourse regarding governmental incompetence and the inadequacy of infrastructure. In essence, the digitally mediated form of this political problem is not merely transmitting it; it is actively transforming it.

Another significant dimension of the digital landscape is how it also creates new forms of political subjectivity. Waste pickers and scavengers, once entirely invisible components of the informal city, are now visible. They challenge their invisibility through interventions in the digital domain, attempting to recover material flows and claim their political agency. They are now recognized as integral parts of urban recycling systems, while remaining ignored in the policy sphere (Njeru & Ochieng, 2025). Their visibility can be attributed to algorithms that amplify their stories, portraying them as overlooked labor fighting back against systemic neglect. Locally based actions, such as coastal clean-ups by youth groups in Kenya, become symbolical performances. The clean-up has the effect of politicizing the environment, either as an assertion of the citizen’s responsibility, as an attack on state incompetence or as a demonstration of collaborative effort. Environmental activism is transformed into a moral battlefield on the digital platform.

In South Africa we see a similar phenomenon of politically charged, algorithmically amplified resistance to landfill expansion and waste siting decisions. In 2026 protests against landfill development in urban periphery settlements, turned into a national narrative of social and environmental injustice through media mobilization; landfill as a continuance of structural violence through spatial inequalities. The discourse produced and amplified across the networks links contemporary exposure to historical environmental inequities through these landfill developments. Here Algorithmic Environmental Populism and environmental justice are closely interwoven, as the narratives attributed to technology and its governance are interpreted through morally loaded systems of victimhood and violence. The broader implications of Algorithmic Environmental Populism in Africa are that the histories of unequally mediated ecological flows, including plastics, second-hand goods and e-waste that flow into African cities and homes as waste from global consumption and production patterns. Such stories tend to produce a framing where the external imposition of blame arises from deeper historical conditions known as waste colonialism – an unequal world where states and their inhabitants bear uneven burdens of waste (Mah, 2024; Dauvergne, 2022).

This links directly into concepts of waste sovereignty – a state of ownership and control over material waste flows, their meanings and governance. In the digital space, sovereignty can now be enacted through the control of narrative. Those able to frame environmental crises in terms of simple, easily accessible, morally legible oppositions, are gaining political ground regardless of their technical knowledge. Environmental politics of waste is no longer a question of physical waste, or of policy-makers’ actions, but increasingly a matter of the visibility of what it is that matters and to whom it matters, a battle of recognition, and control, within platform governed space. 

Therefore, I suggest a three-stage process of digitally mediated waste politics: first, visible urban environmental decay; second, morally legible frames of attribution; and third, algorithmically favored amplification. It is in these stages that complexity is simplified and environmental disaster turns into visible, and therefore governable, political matter.

A certain democratizing aspect is that it allows for participation on new grounds, where citizens, informal waste workers and activist groups can join in debates around the environment on the internet. The downside is that these systems allow for a contraction of discourse: immediate visibility takes the form of sensation and outrage over deliberative engagement, bringing together political mobilization and propaganda (Heidenreich et al., 2022). Consequently, the environment has begun to be spoken of in conflicting terms: critical discourse clashes with simplified frameworks of accusation. A street in Accra that floods, or a dirty drainage canal in Kenya, or a burning landfill in South Africa, are instantly turned into evidence against the state, corporations, or the global system, obscuring underlying complexities.

This new discourse dynamic has major implications for environmental governance. Effectiveness is no longer solely about design and capacity but also about how environmental policies are understood, accepted, and engaged with on line. Municipalities and governments, as well as non-profit organizations need to operate in the digital space to manage the material and political aspects of waste. Scholars of environmental data governance agree that algorithms are key in framing environmental information (Gabrys, 2023). This is also significant for populist politics; waste cannot continue to be seen as an auxiliary or an afterthought. Instead, it has to be seen as a key component of the negotiations around citizenship, inequality, sovereignty and state power; the material traces of society that make social tensions visible and open to struggle. Algorithmic Environmental Populism provides an explanatory frame that connects environmental governance, digital media, and populist politics together, and helps to make sense of the way ecological grievance can be translated into potent political force by means of technologically managed visibility.

In short, the environmental politics of waste in Africa is no longer solely regulated by state and international institutions; its regulation is also about what becomes visible and how, within the spaces that platform logics control. What is now at stake is how we see waste, what we make of it in the discourse we construct, and the meaning that it is given within our digitally mediated attention economies. This transformation is an emblem of a broader shift: authority is no longer held by those who convene political discussions in spaces that are free from the influence of amplification. The management of waste, therefore, involves managing its meaning, a task that in the digital age depends greatly on the very politics of platforms.

 

References

Couldry, N. & Mejias, U. A. (2023). “Data colonialism and the future of social order.” New Media & Society, 25(4), 945–962.

Dauvergne, P. (2022). “Waste, pollution, and the global plastic crisis.” Global Environmental Politics, 22(1), 1–10.

Gabrys, J. (2023). “Digital waste and environmental data politics.” Information, Communication & Society, 26(9), 1785–1801.

Heidenreich, T., et al. (2022). “Populism and digital media: A comparative perspective.” Political Communication, 39(3), 345–362.

Mah, A. (2024). “Waste colonialism and global inequality.” Nature Sustainability, 7(1), 12–15.

Njeru, J. & Ochieng, C. (2025). “Plastic waste governance and informal economies in Africa.” Environmental Politics, 34(2), 256–275.

Parthasarathy, S. & Rajala, R. (2023). “Algorithmic governance and environmental policy.” Regulation & Governance, 17(4), 987–1003.

Zeng, J. & Schäfer, M. S. (2023). “Conceptualizing algorithmic populism.” New Media & Society, 25(8), 2015–2032.