Climate change.

Who Pays to Adapt? Climate Debt and Populist Politics of Climate Justice in Africa

by CommentariesEconomicsEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja uses the concept of “climate debt populism” to examine how climate vulnerability, sovereign debt, and distributive injustice are becoming politically intertwined across Africa. He argues that adaptation finance is not only a technical question of resource mobilization, but also a struggle over responsibility, legitimacy, and who ultimately bears the costs of climate survival. Drawing on examples from Senegal, Zambia, and Malawi, Dr. Solaja shows how climate shocks can intensify fiscal vulnerability, while debt servicing can restrict governments’ capacity to invest in resilience. He calls for a more just climate-finance architecture centered on grant-based adaptation, debt restructuring, accountability, participation, and recognition of Africa’s historically unequal contribution to global emissions

By Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja

Africa’s climate politics is entering a more consequential phase. The debate is no longer about whether vulnerable societies need adaptation finance, but how their political and financial relationship is shaped when they receive it through debt. The resources governments already have to service debt can create a paradox when small increases in debt are added to shield citizens from climate risks: the funds required to lessen vulnerability can create more vulnerability.

This commentary proposes the concept of ‘climate debt populism’ to reflect the political reasoning that can be forged from this paradox. I do not imply, in using the term, that there is an existing pan-African political movement, but rather use it as an analytical framework to examine the potential for linking climate vulnerability, fiscal pressure, and distributive injustice with the populist statement: communities that were least responsible for past greenhouse gas emissions should not bear the burden of additional fiscal costs just to be secure. This struggle is not fundamentally about people who want to act on climate change versus people who don’t. It is a conflict over who has the authority, responsibility, and resources to determine who pays for climate survival.

Why should those who contributed least to the climate crisis pay to survive it?

The Question Behind Climate Finance

Vulnerability is the language of climate change in Africa. With warming, droughts, flooding and food insecurity, adaptation is a pressing developmental need, with increasing water stress and disruption to livelihoods. But vulnerability is not the sole determinant of the politics of adaptation. The question of who pays for protection is becoming increasingly distributive: on whose conditions and at what cost to public finances and future generations?

The answer matters because Africa is in a unique position within the global climate economy. The continent has been responsible for a relatively small share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but faces the highest climate risks. According to the African Development Bank, Africa accounts for less than 4 percent of global emissions but receives only about 3 percent of global climate finance (AfDB, 2025). At the same time, many African countries struggle with limited fiscal space and high debt-service burdens. The outcome is a political economy where the need for adaptation meets the financial limits of the states that will be expected to provide it.

The problem is more than money. It’s about the conditions and modalities of climate finance. Grant financing can increase adaptive capacity without adding a new debt burden. Loans can offer short-term flexibility, but they can also shift the burden of financing adaptation to climate change into the future. The difference between resilience and recovery financing is a political question in situations of repeated climate shocks and additional borrowing.

Climate finance is thus not apolitical. It shares responsibilities among countries, generations and social groups. When people feel they are losing out because of climate change, and that public funding is being limited or restricted, finance becomes an issue of fairness and political legitimacy.

Changing the Conversation from Climate Populism to Climate Debt Populism

Climate debt populism is analytically different from the current discourse on climate populism and extends ideas in this conversation. Political representations of climate policy typically frame the issue as a clash between a righteous or derelict population and those who represent and are responsible for the environment and environmental transition policies, such as the state, the market, or the public interest. When the policy is contentious, as it becomes when measures like carbon pricing or subsidy reform and energy transition are felt to be economically burdensome, climate politics can get messy in these accounts.

Climate debt populism changes what is contended. Its main grievance might not be climate action. Instead, it’s about the inequity of funding climate action and climate harm. The conflict arises when the price of adaptation is seen as an indicator of an international order that is separate from responsibility and burden.

The populist logic may thus be expressed in three interconnected steps. First, a material injury is apparent: crops fail to produce, houses are destroyed by floodwater, electricity networks are weakened, livelihoods are lost, and public services are economically constrained. Second, the injury is read by making a moral judgment between those suffering and those seen to have disproportionate power to control the distribution of costs. Third, this distinction becomes a political demand for recognition, redistribution and accountability.

‘The elite’ concerned is therefore far less monolithic than in traditional national populist politics. It could involve national political and economic decision makers, foreign creditors, financial institutions, rich high-emitting countries and technocratic institutions thought to set the rules for accessing funding by vulnerable societies. This doesn’t mean these actors form a unified bloc. Instead, they can be symbolically linked in a popular story of unequal responsibility.

This matters because it avoids making the concept synonymous with anti-Westernism or with opposition to the international financial system. Climate debt populism is not a movement against debt, but a struggle about the legitimacy of an unequal burden of climate responsibility. Its basic moral principle is that adaptation costs should be assigned by considering historical responsibility, current exposure, and financial resources.

Debt Amplifies Climate Change as a Political Vulnerability

Young African woman carrying water.
Young African woman carrying water in a village near Bamako, Mali, symbolizing the human impact of drought and water scarcity. Photo: Dreamstime.

This political claim has material force through debt. According to ActionAid International’s analysis of 65 highly climate-vulnerable countries, in September 2026, these countries will have paid almost 25 times more on debt repayments than on climate action. It notes that debt servicing as a share of government revenue is estimated to consume about 65 percent in Global South countries and is about 225 times higher than the climate finance they receive via grants (ActionAid International, 2026). The statistics must be viewed with care as they are an amalgamation and do not represent a consistent African experience. Their importance, however, lies in the structural relationship they point to: obligations to repay fiscal resources can take up fiscal resources just when investment in adaptation has to increase.

The resulting mechanism is potentially self-reinforcing. High-severity climate events cause economic and physical damage. The funding of emergency relief, reconstruction and social protection in the face of the government must be made. If grants and concessional resources are insufficient, additional borrowing becomes attractive or unavoidable. This leaves less fiscal room for preventive investments because of debt-service obligations. Weak adaptation leaves communities exposed to subsequent shocks, which generate additional losses and renewed financing needs. Fiscal vulnerability can thus exacerbate climate risk, and climate risk can constrain capacity to reduce fiscal vulnerability.

This is not to say that climate change is solely responsible for debt crises in Africa. Sovereign debt is determined by domestic fiscal policies, commodity dependence, exchange-rate pressures, borrowing policies, governance, global interest rates and the structure of the international financial system. A credible argument in the name of climate justice must, therefore, withstand monocausal explanations. The more assertive position is that climate shocks exacerbate existing financial fragilities and can make an already challenging debt situation much tougher.

Senegal: When Debt Service Crowds Out Climate Ambition

Senegal is a case in point for the inseparability of politics and fiscal capacity in climate finance. According to ActionAid’s 2026 analysis, Senegal’s debt servicing is more than 96 percent of government revenue and over 600 times its planned spending on climate action. For every US$1 budgeted for climate action, US$605 is being spent on debt servicing, according to the calculation. The exact proportion should be regarded as a representation of the fiscal structure of a particular advocacy organization, and not as a yardstick for the country’s fiscal structure. Its political significance nevertheless remains striking.

Fiscal constraint is not a macroeconomic phenomenon, but a condition that affects citizens engaged in agriculture and reliant on infrastructure and functioning public services. It is felt when there is a risk, and the state is unable to protect people. A farmer confronting declining productivity does not experience sovereign debt as a balance-sheet category. The experience is mediated through access to irrigation, agricultural support, roads, electricity, social protection and the state’s capacity to respond when climate shocks occur.

This is where climate debt can acquire populist meaning. When citizens feel that public institutions can afford external debt but not internal security against environmental insecurity, the line between economic and climate injustice becomes a political debate. The question becomes less “How much finance has been mobilized?” and more “Whose obligations are being prioritized?”

Zambia: When a Climate Shock Becomes a Fiscal Shock

Zambia illustrates an aspect of the issue, where environmental shocks rapidly turn into macro-economic and political shocks. The World Bank described the country’s 2024 drought as the driest in decades; it affected approximately 9.8 million people, with 6.6 million experiencing severe food insecurity. Likewise, Zambia’s reliance on hydropower worsened a major electricity crisis, and agricultural production was also greatly affected (World Bank, 2024).

These pressures were added to a challenging debt restructuring process. The World Bank then approved US$100 million to finance development policy and provide a support facility for catastrophe events, highlighting the need for liquidity in the event of a climate shock. However, there is a deep challenge that needs to be addressed: emergency funding can mitigate and repair harm in the short term, but it will not necessarily close gaps in the longer term in the resources needed to prepare for adaptation.

Climate events remain a downside risk to Zambia’s debt-service capacity, according to the IMF’s 2026 assessment. This connection has political importance, as it links environmental insecurity to the state’s fiscal stability. A succession of shocks may then alter citizens’ perceptions of national governments and the international financial system as a whole. When the climate is made insecure, it tests institutions’ capacity to offer security without adding another generation of debt.

Malawi: The Politics of Rebuilding the Same Future

Malawi’s experience with Cyclone Freddy makes the distributional stakes equally visible. According to the World Bank (2023), material losses amounted to about US$505 million, while production losses were around US$36.4 million, equivalent to about 0.5 percent of Malawi’s 2023 GDP. These statistics concealed the destruction of homes, disruption of agriculture, damage to infrastructure and loss of livelihoods.

Reconstruction is a tough decision for a budget-constrained government—balancing the social and political costs of leaving communities exposed with the financial costs of borrowing to rebuild. Governments could continue to pay for the impacts of climate hazards without sufficiently reducing the likelihood or impact of further loss.

This is why it is as important as the amount of climate finance as it is well-designed. A dollar of grant finance and a dollar of sovereign borrowing are not politically equivalent. They distribute obligations differently across time and across social groups. The former can build the community’s public capacity without adding to the repayment burden; the latter can shift some of today’s adaptation burden onto future taxpayers. Therefore, it is not only a matter of mobilizing resources, but of their financial architecture as well, that is, a matter of climate justice.

From Climate Victims to Climate Creditors

One of the most profound political changes may be conceptual. African countries have often been portrayed internationally as weak recipients that need help. This is becoming an outdated perspective. Climate-justice claims are increasingly becoming language of responsibility, entitlement and institutional change, rather than “help us because we are vulnerable”; it is becoming “recognition of what is owed because responsibility and harm are unequally distributed.”

Warlenius (2018) proposed a shift from emissions to questions of responsibility, atmospheric space, and compensation through the concept of climate debt, which emerged within climate-justice movements. This argument considers the intersection of the moral grammar of climate debt, current sovereign debt, and the lived reality of adaptation under fiscal constraint.

This suggests a politically viable possibility of reversal. African countries cannot be read only as clients of a lender who comes to them for help. They can also speak in a way that makes them claimants in a just climate order. The language of ‘climate creditors’ can help here as a political metaphor; it emphasises the historical and distributive aspects of climate responsibility, but does not suggest that African states have traditional financial claims against specific governments.

Making this distinction is crucial. Climate-creditor politics does not absolve African governments of responsibility. Vulnerability may be exacerbated by corruption, weak institutions, unsustainable borrowing patterns and poor public spending and African governments should be held accountable at home. There is no conflict between international responsibility and national accountability. They work at various levels of the same political economy.

The New Political Antagonism

At this point, climate debt populism is analytically useful. It recognises a type of political opposition based on the unequal division of financial responsibilities, where material climate insecurity is expressed in this way. The applicable political boundary is not definitive. It could be between citizens and national elites, vulnerable states and creditors or historically high emitters and climate-sensitive societies. In practice, these boundaries can overlap.

The risk is that such a politics can go in two extremely different directions. It can create a democratic politics of climate justice, calling for transparency in finance, reorganization of debt, and reparative responsibility and greater public accountability. However, it can also be seized by the political entrepreneur who simplifies the weave of politics to an unchecked story of foreign conspiracy, domestic betrayal or perpetual victimhood. The concept should not therefore be considered – normatively – as progressive or regressive.

It is a democratic question in that it raises a public debate over who is best positioned to determine who will bear the costs of climate change. Failing to involve citizens in designing climate finance through technical negotiations and institutions far removed from the people can create a legitimacy deficit with political repercussions. On the other hand, if climate finance is transparent, locally accountable, and clearly linked to social protection and adaptation outcomes, it can reinforce democratic trust.

Preserving the Natural World within the Context of Non-Debt-Creating Adaptation (COP31)

This debate comes at an opportune moment. Adaptation, finance, and loss and damage are key themes of the climate negotiations to be discussed at COP31, to be held in Antalya from 9-20 November 2026. African governments should thus ask not just how much money is pledged, but how much they will receive in the end. What forms of finance are being provided, on which terms and at what cost to future generations?

The answer matters because a climate finance target can be achieved in several ways that produce very different politics. A significant share of adaptation resources could be financed through loans, which may provide immediate financial support to vulnerable states but create future debt obligations. This finance can be beneficial in certain instances, especially when concessionality is high, and investments have a productive return. However, borrowing does not always align with climate justice.

A more believable framework for getting climate finance to Africa would thus be based on four pillars. First, adaptation finance really needs to be far more grant-based, especially in highly vulnerable countries with limited fiscal space. Second, the support for loss and damage should be on top of, not instead of, adaptation finance. Third, countries already experiencing unsustainable debt levels should have trustworthy debt-restructuring instruments, so climate shocks are not necessarily a source of additional debt crises. Finally, African countries and affected communities should be more influential in designing, allocating and monitoring climate finance.

In particular, the fourth principle is important. Wealth redistribution is not the only issue of climate justice between North and South. It is also about redistribution within countries. External resources can fuel inequality when they fall into the hands of political elites, are concentrated in capital-heavy projects, or are not tied to the communities most vulnerable to climate risks. This is why a just climate-finance architecture should link international and domestic responsibility, transparency, participation, and accountability.

Beyond the Politics of Vulnerability

The politics of African climate change is thus shifting away from a politics of vulnerability. The danger remains very real, but it is no longer politically sufficient. More and more governments, movements, and citizens are asking what vulnerability means in a global context where the conditions of climate change and climate impacts do not align with the distribution of financial means.

One possible political result of this contradiction is climate debt populism. It emerges when climate insecurity and debt insecurity become legible as parts of the same injustice, and when citizens interpret adaptation financing as a test of who counts, who owes, and who has the authority to determine the future. The idea thus includes a political element to a policy discussion that is frequently framed as a purely technical matter of climate finance.

The broader importance of the study is to move from the question “How much climate finance is needed in Africa” to “What political order is being reproduced in the provision of climate finance?” That question is more complex, as it deals with responsibility, power, debt, legitimacy, and distribution at the same time.

Africa does not need a regime of climate finance that makes adaptation possible today and harder to sustain in the years to come. Nor does it need a politics that converts legitimate climate grievances into simplistic blame. What is needed is a system in which the three aspects of historical responsibility, financial capacity, domestic accountability, and democratic participation are seen as interlinked aspects of climate justice.

The decisive test of climate finance is not whether money reaches vulnerable countries. It is whether that money enables them to become less vulnerable without increasing their debt. This is indeed the political issue of climate adaptation. The language of vulnerability is giving way to the language of entitlement in Africa’s climate politics: from “Save us from a crisis” to “acknowledge the distribution of responsibility for a crisis.” If that shift becomes politically salient, climate finance will no longer be a technocratic subfield of international development. It will be at the heart of the battle for global justice, global sovereignty and democratic legitimacy.

Who pays to adapt—and, in the emerging politics of climate debt, who actually owes whom?

 

References

ActionAid International. (2026, September 16). Debt fuels the climate crisis: How the finance flows. https://actionaid.org/publications/2026/debt-fuels-climate-crisis

African Development Bank. (2025). African Economic Outlook 2025. https://www.afdb.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/afdb25-01_aeo_highlights_english_020625.pdf

International Monetary Fund. (2026). Climate shocks, debt defaults and investment in climate adaptation: Squaring an impossible trilemma. IMF Working Paper No. 2026/128. https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2026/06/23/climate-shocks-debt-defaults-and-investment-in-climate-adaptation-squaring-an-impossible-577218

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. (2026). Stakeholders close CCDA-14 with strong calls for climate finance, stronger agency and delivery ahead of COP31. UNECA. https://www.uneca.org/stories/stakeholders-close-ccda-14-with-strong-calls-for-climate-finance%2C-stronger-agency-and

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (2026). COP31. UNFCCC.

Warlenius, R. (2018). “Decolonizing the atmosphere: The climate justice movement on climate debt.” Development and Change, 49(2), 454–478. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12387

World Bank. (2023). Malawi economic update: New Malawi Economic Update calls for urgent action to address macroeconomic imbalances and increase energy access. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2023/07/19/new-afe-malawi-economic-update-calls-for-urgent-action-to-address-macroeconomic-imbalances-and-increase-energy-access

World Bank. (2024). World Bank steps up support to increase Zambia’s resilience to natural disasters.https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/12/18/world-bank-steps-up-support-to-increase-afe-zambias-resilience-to-natural-disasters

Trace.

ECPS Joins TRACE, a New EU-Funded Project on Colonial Legacies and Climate Vulnerability

by Editor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeProjects

ECPS has joined TRACE – Tracing Colonial Legacies in Climate Vulnerabilities, a new 24-month project funded by the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme. TRACE examines how Europe’s colonial history continues to shape contemporary climate vulnerability, inequality, migration, and environmental justice. Focusing especially on young people aged 15–30, including those from migrant and postcolonial backgrounds, the project combines climate education, historical reflection, democratic participation, and public engagement. Activities will include workshops, exhibitions, public debates, documentary screenings, student-led case studies, and foresight exercises. TRACE will culminate in a Youth Charter on Climate Migration and Vulnerability, bringing young people’s perspectives into wider European debates on climate justice, historical responsibility, and intergenerational equity.

ECPS (Brussels)

The European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) has joined TRACE – Tracing Colonial Legacies in Climate Vulnerabilities, a new 24-month project funded by the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme.

TRACE explores how Europe’s colonial history continues to shape patterns of vulnerability to climate change today. By examining the connections between colonial legacies, climate inequality, migration, and environmental justice, the project seeks to explain why communities experience the consequences of the climate crisis so differently and how more equitable and inclusive responses can be developed.

The project focuses primarily on young people aged 15–30, including secondary school students, university students, and young professionals, with particular attention to participants from migrant and postcolonial backgrounds. It also engages educators, policymakers, and civil society organizations, especially those working on migration, youth participation, climate change, and environmental justice.

At the heart of TRACE is an effort to strengthen young people’s understanding of colonial history and its relationship to contemporary climate and environmental inequalities. The project also aims to equip participants with the knowledge and critical tools needed to engage with debates on climate change, migration, historical responsibility, and intergenerational justice.

A Participatory and Youth-Led Approach

Trace Logo.

TRACE is built around participatory and youth-led activities designed to combine historical reflection, climate education, democratic participation, and public engagement. Planned activities include workshops on climate science, open forums where young participants can share experiences, emotions, and testimonies, and intergenerational conversations exploring how historical memories and contemporary climate challenges intersect.

The project will also organize exhibitions, public debates, documentary screenings, student-led case studies, and foresight exercises encouraging participants to imagine possible patterns of climate mobility by 2050.

An important dimension of TRACE will be its engagement with European climate policy. Participants will examine initiatives including the EU Clean Industrial Deal through a decolonial perspective, considering how contemporary climate strategies relate to questions of historical responsibility, inequality, and justice.

Young participants will also work together to develop a conceptual framework connecting colonization and contemporary climate vulnerability. Their findings and reflections will be communicated through a youth-led Instagram channel, helping extend the project’s discussions beyond formal workshops and events.

From Historical Reflection to Democratic Participation

One of the project’s central objectives is to connect historical understanding with democratic practice. TRACE will culminate in the collaborative drafting of a Youth Charter on Climate Migration and Vulnerability. Developed through a participatory process, the Charter will articulate young people’s perspectives on climate vulnerability, migration, historical responsibility, and justice.

The final document will be shared with policymakers, activists, civil society organizations, and other relevant stakeholders, ensuring that the voices and experiences of young participants contribute to wider European debates about climate policy and migration. 

By looking critically at the past, TRACE seeks to deepen understanding of how colonial histories continue to influence the unequal distribution of climate risks in the present. At the same time, the project aims to foster inclusive remembrance, intergenerational justice, democratic participation, and climate resilience.

A European Partnership

Trace.
TRACE brings together organizations from across Europe with expertise in education, environmental sustainability, human rights, youth participation, democratic engagement, and research.

TRACE brings together organizations from across Europe with expertise in education, environmental sustainability, human rights, youth participation, democratic engagement, and research. The consortium consists of:

🇵🇹 EducPro — Portugal

🇮🇹 Fondazione CREDA ETS – Centro Ricerca Educazione Documentazione Ambientale — Italy

🇪🇸 Altekio Iniciativas hacia la Sostenibilidad, S. Coop. Madrid — Spain

🇸🇮 PIC – Legal Center for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment / Pravni center za varstvo človekovih pravic in okolja — Slovenia

🇧🇪 Sumatra Innovation ASBL — Belgium

🇧🇪 European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) — Belgium

The consortium recently held its kick-off meeting in Portugal, where project partners came together to establish the framework for cooperation and set the course for the activities to be carried out over the coming two years. The launch of TRACE also received local media attention in Portugal, with the project featured in the Portuguese newspaper Diário do Minho.

Through its participation in TRACE, ECPS will contribute to the project’s broader examination of historical legacies, democratic participation, inequality, climate vulnerability, and the political dimensions of climate justice. The partnership also extends ECPS’s engagement with European research and civil society initiatives addressing the intersection of democracy, social justice, youth participation, and contemporary political challenges.

Over the coming months, ECPS will share updates on TRACE’s research, workshops, exhibitions, public debates, youth activities, and other project outputs through its website and social media channels.

Underground platinum and palladium mining operations and machinery in Johannesburg.

Green Colonialism or Green Sovereignty? Africa’s Critical Minerals and the Politics of the Energy Transition

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateForeign PolicyHome

Africa’s centrality to the global energy transition rests increasingly on its vast reserves of critical minerals, yet mineral abundance alone does not guarantee developmental sovereignty. Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja’s commentary argues that the key challenge is whether African states remain low-value extractive peripheries or convert geological advantage into industrial capacity, technological learning, regional value chains, ecological accountability, and democratic bargaining power. It develops the concept of transition sovereignty to capture the ability of resource-rich societies to shape extraction, processing, governance, knowledge, finance, and value distribution on their own terms. Rather than rejecting foreign investment, the article calls for strategic interdependence, stronger regionalism, and accountable institutions capable of ensuring that decarbonization produces not only cleaner technologies, but also more equitable and developmentally transformative outcomes for African societies.

By Dr. Oludele Mayowa Solaja

The global energy transition is frequently framed as a clean break from the extractive political economy of fossil fuels. But decarbonization technologies such as digital infrastructure, electricity grids, electric vehicles, batteries, and wind turbines rely on another extractive frontier—critical minerals. Strategic materials such as lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, graphite, and rare earth elements are emerging as essential materials for a low-carbon economy. In Africa, this transition is dominated, yet its importance is underutilized: the continent provides substantial amounts of minerals needed by clean-technology industries. Still, it receives only a small share of the value (IEA, 2025). The big question is not whether Africa will provide the green transition, but what it will look like and whether African societies have the political, industrial, and technological capacity to define its terms.

This is different from green colonialism and what this commentary calls transition sovereignty. Green colonialism is not just the extraction of African minerals by foreign companies. It describes a larger political-economic trend that is creating a material geography of global decarbonization where the rents of processing, technological control, knowledge, finance, and supply chains lie disproportionately elsewhere, particularly in Africa. The language of the commodity shifts, from oil to coal, lithium to cobalt and copper—but so does the underlying asymmetry. The threat is not the exclusion of Africa from the green transition. It is that Africa will be represented on conditions that mirror its historical role as a low-value exporter of ecological wealth.

A new yardstick exists for measuring Africa’s involvement: transition sovereignty. It means the ability of resource-rich societies to decide on the extraction, processing, governance and distribution of transition minerals, as well as to develop their own and regional skills and expertise in industry, technology, knowledge, financing and ecological regulation. It’s less restrictive than state ownership and less strict than local content rules. A country has transition sovereignty if mineral wealth increases its bargaining power, builds productive capacity, benefits society, safeguards ecological and community interests, and lets African actors shape the organization of global green value chains. The issue is not only who owns the mine, but who decides and has the power to make the decisions and technologies that start underground and end up at the surface of the decarbonization technologies.

Beyond Resource Control: Building Productive and Technological Capacity

But Africa is starting to challenge the conditions of the transition. The African Union’s Green Minerals Strategy focuses on value addition at source, regional industrialization, climate resilience, and integrated value chains, rather than relying on raw mineral exports (African Union, 2025). National export controls also indicate a clear direction of travel. Since 2023, Africa has implemented at least 14 measures to limit the export of raw or semi-processed minerals, and in February 2026, Zimbabwe banned the export of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates to encourage in-country beneficiation and accountability (Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, 2026; Reuters, 2026a). Such measures cannot be idealized as definitions of sovereignty. They are better understood as efforts to renegotiate where value exits African economies.

Zimbabwe provides a revealing illustration of both the possibilities and limits of resource sovereignty. The action was directly tied to in-country value addition, accountability and beneficiation (Reuters, 2026a) in its February 2026 suspension of exports of raw minerals and lithium concentrates. This policy reflects a well-known model in which upstream mining companies in Africa export concentrates, and downstream processing and value-added manufacturing occur elsewhere. But restricting exports is just the first step. An export ban can generate ‘protected extraction without transformative industrialization’ without reliable electricity, transport, finance, processing technologies, skilled labor, industrial demand and credible institutions. The real question is: Does export restraint build productive capabilities, or does it merely shift rents at the mine gate?

Thus, the Zimbabwean example illustrates an overarching lesson in the theory of transition sovereignty: control of the commodity is not enough if it is not matched by control over the capabilities attached to it. Industrialization does not need to be confined within the national boundaries. It needs to develop, process, create, capitalize, and integrate mineral production resources into local economies. The IEA sees Africa’s opportunity in spreading the transition’s economic value across the global value chain, because its economic value is distributed unevenly along the chain (IEA, 2025). In this sense, sovereignty is not realized by stopping the extraction; it is realized by transforming a geological advantage into a sustainable productive capacity.

Knowledge Sovereignty and the Regionalization of Green Value Chains

Another aspect of the issue is related to knowledge sovereignty, as demonstrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In September 2026, the Congolese government stepped up its efforts to centralize geological information by creating a national geological databank, along with new aerial surveys and digital mapping. The goal is to strengthen state control, reduce the information imbalance, and boost the state’s negotiating leverage in mining deals (Reuters, 2026b). This is important because mineral sovereignty is also epistemic (knowledge-based). Information on the location, quality, access, and strategic value of deposits shapes investment, licensing, negotiation, and long-term planning. Formal ownership of mineral deposits can coexist with informational dependency, as long as geological intelligence, technical standards, and data infrastructures are externally dominated.

The DRC case also reminds us to see transition sovereignty beyond the state. If enhancing the bargaining power of government is to produce “public value,” “transparency” in contracts, “environmental accountability,” and “meaningful benefits” to “communities” and “workers,” then sovereignty is becoming “developmental.” It’s not just a matter of African States regaining control from foreign companies. It is the extent to which mineral control is institutionalized in institutions capable of making mineral governance socially accountable. Otherwise, the language of sovereignty can be used to justify a transfer of control from an outside entity to domestic elites, without changing who gets the benefits and who bears the costs.

The DRC-Zambia battery and electric-vehicle project provides a better regional prospect. Instead of treating copper and cobalt as a commodity that must leave the region before higher-value use can begin, the two nations have worked to develop a cross-border value-chain model that includes mineral processing, battery production, and industrial capabilities. The UN Economic Commission for Africa and other regional institutions have technically supported the activity. In 2025, measures were taken to strengthen engagement by firms, financial institutions, and other actors in the battery and electric-vehicle value chain. This is not limited to battery production. It shows how mineral-rich countries can be viewed as hubs of regional industrial coordination, not just sources of raw materials being bid for by foreign extractors.

Regionalism matters because many constraints to African benefaction are too great for individual states to overcome alone. Processing plants need stable energy, transport tie-ups, technical expertise, markets, capital, and volume. A regional strategy can then transform uncoordinated mineral resources into coordinated industrial systems. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) initiative on environmentally and socially responsible energy-transition mineral value chains also aims to keep mineral wealth within the region and encourage livelihoods and industrialization in several southern African nations (UNECA, 2026). This requires a multi-level understanding of transition sovereignty at the national, regional, and continental levels.

Strategic Interdependence: Partnerships on Whose Terms?

But the new mineral race reveals a more profound paradox. African minerals are now being talked about in terms of partnership, supply-chain security and strategic cooperation with powers, many of them global, who seek them out. The US, EU and China have legitimate reasons to acquire access to critical minerals. For instance, in September 2026, the US government announced its support for developing critical mineral processing in Kenya, including the proposed development of the Mrima Hill resource, while stressing the importance of local processing and value-added production (Reuters, 2026c). These partnerships could be real opportunities. Diversifying external partners is not sovereignty. African countries may expand the number of buyers of their products but not substantially alter the nature of their political economy if they switch from one big buyer to a few smaller ones and they still export their low-value resources.

That is why the question “with whom?” has to be asked alongside a deeper question: “with whom for?” or “with whom on whose terms?” Colonial elements in external capital, technology, and markets are not the same. The developmental consequences relate to bargaining power, institutional design, ownership structures, local linkages, environmental protection, and rent distribution. Hence, the target should not be autarky or opposition to foreign investment. Strategic interdependence means the ability to involve global partners without giving up control over the developmental paths of mineral societies.

From Mineral Abundance to Developmental Sovereignty

The politics of critical minerals also reveal the boundaries of a technologically driven view of decarbonization. A battery can have a range of emissions during its use, whereas its material components can include land dispossession, unsafe mining practices, water stress, labor exploitation, or ecological degradation. Thus, the environmental legality of green technologies cannot be judged solely by their carbon performance. This transition is likely to result in a “cleaner” global economy, but at the cost of African communities in the mining sector. The political feasibility of green development lies in jointly considering the costs of extraction and the benefits of decarbonization.

This will expand to include community and labor. Foreign ownership does not inevitably mean environmental damage, and state ownership does not necessarily mean that it is socially just. The key is whether the rights of people living and working around the mineral frontiers are meaningful and include access to information, voice, and benefits of extraction. Artisanal and small-scale miners are important in this context. Formalization cannot be used to criminalize informal miners; it should provide avenues to formalize their lives, safety, skills, and value addition. Otherwise, the switch could perpetuate the traditional scenario where people near the source of value bear the risk of extraction, while value is generated further up the chain.

The strategic question for Africa is then no longer whether to accept or reject the green transition, but rather how to do so. It’s a choice between engaging in it as an extractive periphery and as an industrial, technological, and political actor. The latter requires reliable and affordable energy, transport infrastructure, mineral-processing capacity, regional markets, skills, research and development, transparent contracts, accountable institutions, and effective protections for communities and workers. It also demands that governments differentiate between resource nationalism and transformation. National control may be a tool for development, but it is not development.

Decarbonization on Africa’s Terms

The green colonialism and transition sovereignty binary should thus be viewed as a spectrum of political-economic options. An African country can boost state bargaining power without excluding communities from the benefits; it can boost local processing but remain highly technology-dependent; or it can attract several foreign investors but keep exporting the bulk of the value contribution of its minerals. On the other hand, through mineral policy, a country can pursue regional industrialization, develop its own capacities and skills, improve ecological governance, and increase democratic involvement. The shift is therefore not necessarily green, just, sovereign, or developmental. Its character is being politically constructed.

This is therefore a both-and situation for the developing critical-mineral economy. Africa’s strategic position, which it could use to renegotiate its role in global geopolitics, will not create sovereignty if it is merely geologically abundant. The important question is whether mineral extraction becomes a basis for industrial potential, technological learning, fiscal independence, ecological responsibility, and democratic negotiating strength. The question is no longer just whether the world can decarbonize, but how. It’s about who has the power to decide, who receives the value created along the chain, who pays the environmental and social costs, and who controls the material foundations of decarbonization.

If Africa is the source of the mines, then others are the source of the manufacture, and the color of colonialism can vary without its political economy changing. The energy transition may be more than just a change in energy systems if Africa’s mineral wealth is translated into regional industrial capability, technological capability, ecological responsibility, and democratic bargaining power. It may be a chance to reimagine Africa’s economics in the international arena. This is the true measure of transition sovereignty—whether Africa provides the green transition or whether Africa can help regulate the transition.

 

References

Africa Center for Strategic Studies. (2026). Reciprocal and resilient mineral supply chains: Lessons from the Nacala Corridor. https://africacenter.org/spotlight/mineral-supply-chains-nacala-corridor/

African Union. (2025). Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS). African Union Commission.https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/44539-doc-AGMS_Final_doc.pdf

International Energy Agency. (2025). Stepping up the value chain in Africa. IEA, Paris.https://www.iea.org/reports/stepping-up-the-value-chain-in-africa

Reuters. (2026a, February 25). “Zimbabwe bans exports of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates, cites malpractices.” https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zimbabwe-bans-exports-all-raw-minerals-lithium-concentrates-2026-02-25/

Reuters. (2026b, September 8). “Congo extends state control over mining with bid to lock down geological data.” https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congo-extends-state-control-over-mining-with-bid-lock-down-geological-data-2026-09-08/

Reuters. (2026c, September 9). “US says it will help develop Kenya’s critical minerals processing.” https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-says-it-will-help-develop-kenyas-critical-minerals-processing-2026-09-09/

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. (2024, April 15). “Zambia and DRC to implement an innovative transboundary battery and electric vehicle Special Economic Zone.” https://www.uneca.org/stories/zambia-and-drc-to-implement-an-innovative-transboundary-battery-and-electric-vehicle-special

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. (2025, September 11). “ECA capacitates micro, small and medium enterprises in DRC and Zambia to tap battery and electric vehicle value chain opportunities.” https://www.uneca.org/stories/eca-capacitates-micro-small-and-medium-enterprises-in-drc-and-zambia-to-tap-battery-and

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. (2026, June 2). “SADC launches landmark initiative to build sustainable energy transition mineral value chains.” https://www.uneca.org/stories/sadc-launches-landmark-initiative-to-build-sustainable-energy-transition-mineral-value

Data center campus.

The Hidden Cost of AI: Our Climate, Our Children, Our Future

by Digital-populismEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeVoice of Youth

In this Voice of Youth (VoY) piece, Emaan Zahra examines the intertwined environmental and developmental costs of the rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence. She argues that AI’s seemingly immaterial convenience rests on resource-intensive infrastructures whose growing demands for freshwater and electricity can intensify environmental pressures, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and affect communities surrounding data centers. At the same time, Zahra draws attention to the implications of habitual AI use for children, particularly when technological assistance substitutes for independent learning, critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. Connecting these concerns, she presents AI proliferation as a dual challenge for climate sustainability and the intellectual development of younger generations. Zahra calls for greater responsibility from parents, educators, technology companies, and policymakers to establish boundaries that enable technological progress while protecting environmental resources and children’s capacity for independent thought.

By Emaan Zahra

Today, the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is growing very fast. This growth creates many serious problems all over the world. To fix these problems, we must look at how AI works behind our screens. AI has quickly become a normal part of daily life for most people. This has created a habit of overusing technology. This constant use hurts the environment and changes how children grow up. While we enjoy the speed of AI, we ignore its real-world costs. In the end, the convenience of AI harms our planet and weakens the thinking skills of the next generation.

The Hidden Environmental Cost of AI

The computers that power AI search engines and chatbots require a massive physical setup. A decade ago, technology companies used simple liquid cooling systems to keep their computers from overheating. These older systems did not require too many resources. However, as millions of people started using AI, computers had to work much harder and faster. To stop their systems from crashing, big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta now use huge amounts of electricity and freshwater. These companies need perfectly clean water, so their expensive computers do not rust or break. Because AI is so popular today, the demand for these natural resources has skyrocketed.

How AI Drains Local Water Supplies

The huge amount of water used by AI data centers directly hurts local communities. These centers take water from nearby lakes, rivers, and underground supplies. This is the exact same water that families, neighborhoods, and schools rely on every day. Research shows that asking an AI chatbot just 20 to 50 simple questions can use up to one full liter of water. Over time, this adds up to a massive amount. AI cooling systems waste enough water to fill nine Olympic-sized swimming pools every single day. Even worse, 80% of this water turns into vapor and is completely lost to the air. This causes a real water crisis for the people living near these computer centers.

Energy Pollution and Climate Change

Along with wasting water, AI centers need an incredible amount of electricity to stay turned on. Experts estimate that by the year 2030, AI energy needs will increase by 400%. This is the same amount of electricity that the entire United Kingdom uses in a whole year. For example, Google reported that its push into AI caused its total greenhouse gas emissions to rise by 48% compared to 2019. Because most electricity still comes from burning coal, oil, and gas, power plants have released over 30 billion tons of pollution recently. This pollution traps heat, raises global temperatures, and causes worse hurricanes, floods, and climate change.

The Problems with Proposed AI Fixes

Scientists and tech companies have tried to think of ways to fix these problems, but most ideas are not practical yet. One popular idea is to build data centers underwater so the cold ocean can cool the computers naturally. However, salt water is highly corrosive. It can easily leak into the pods and destroy the delicate technology. Another idea is to launch AI data centers into outer space as satellites. While this would save Earth’s water, it is way too expensive and dangerous right now. Space debris and rocket pollution make this a very distant dream. Because these fixes do not work yet, our local environments continue to suffer.

How Environmental Damage Hurts Children’s Health

This damage to nature directly harms the health and safety of young children. To understand this problem, we have to look at a child’s everyday surroundings. The air pollution from burning fossil fuels for AI electricity has caused a rise in lung illnesses among children. Young bodies are still growing, and their lungs are small. This makes them highly vulnerable to bad asthma and permanent lung damage. In addition, climate change ruins crops and alters weather patterns, which causes food shortages and high grocery prices. The invisible power grids that run our apps are creating a physical health crisis for children.

How AI Weakens a Child’s Thinking Skills

At the same time, easy access to AI tools threatens the mental growth and independent thinking of children. When young students let machines do their schoolwork, their brains do not get the exercise they need to grow. Instead of figuring out hard problems, students use AI chatbots to write essays, read stories, and solve math homework. This habit weakens the brain just like a lack of exercise weakens a muscle. If you stop walking, your leg muscles will waste away. In the exact same way, the human brain gets weaker if it is shielded from challenges. Children who rely completely on AI may never learn how to analyze information deeply.

The Loss of Creativity and Memory

The long-term danger of relying on AI is that children lose the ability to spot lies, think of new ideas, and solve problems creatively. Learning these skills takes years of practice and making mistakes without help. Because AI gives perfect answers in a split second, children learn to accept whatever the computer tells them. They do not double-check facts or think critically. Because of this, their knowledge stays very shallow. They do not truly understand what they are learning. This instant gratification loop also shortens attention spans and makes it hard for children to remember things. Instead of learning to think for themselves, kids are trading their brainpower for fast answers.

A Path Forward

The rapid rise of AI creates a double crisis for our environment and our children’s minds. The hidden computer systems behind AI drain vital water supplies and cause heavy air pollution, hurting local families. At the same time, using chatbots as an academic shortcut stops children’s brains from developing properly. To fix this, parents, teachers, and tech companies must work together. We need to set strict limits on how much power AI uses and how children use it in school. Only by setting these boundaries can we protect our planet and keep the next generation smart and independent.

 

Emaan Zahra is a 16-year-old aspiring student who believes that that the over and unnecessary consumption of AI is very harmful for our minds and climate. She would like to note that she believes that AI should prosper in medical and industrial fields but in ones day to day tasks it should be used as little as possible or not at all. Email: emaanzahra212@gmail.com

Turkey: Bales of waste plastic prepared for transport.

When the Global South Says ‘No’: Waste Sovereignty and the New Geography of Environmental Security

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHome

In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja argues that waste is no longer merely an environmental management problem but an emerging question of sovereignty, justice, and environmental security. Underscoring the concept of waste sovereignty, he contends that the central issue is not simply who bears environmental burdens, but who has the authority to refuse them. Using Turkey’s transformation into a major destination for European plastic waste as a revealing case, the commentary demonstrates how the circular economy can shift environmental risks rather than reduce them when accountability is displaced across borders. Dr. Solaja calls for a new framework that links waste governance to political agency, material accountability, and environmental justice, arguing that the future of environmental security depends on empowering communities—not merely managing waste.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

The world has a waste problem. But have we been asking the right question? Today, international environmental policy has focused mainly on waste as a management issue – how to collect, recycle, regulate and dispose of waste safely. Yet the growing international movement of discarded materials reveals a more fundamental political question: who has the authority to decide where the environmental consequences of global consumption will go—and who has the power to refuse them? This is not a semantic distinction. It’s about the kind of inequality that is at the core of the current world.

Now commodities, capital, and the waste flow across borders with great ease. Environmental risks do not. They tend to concentrate in specific locales, workplaces and communities — frequently in areas of weak political bargaining power and limited regulatory capacity. Some societies consume; others process; still others live with the pollution, occupational hazards and ecological damage generated along the way. Waste is therefore not simply what remains after consumption. It’s becoming more and more a question of power, sovereignty and security.

A Shipment Can Be Legal Without Being Just

Here comes the concept of waste sovereignty into play. Waste sovereignty is a shift from the question of how poorer countries can deal with the world’s waste, to why should particular countries and communities shoulder environmental risks produced elsewhere? It is about the ability of a state or community to decide what types of waste are brought into their area, how and for whom. More fundamentally, though, it’s about a political right to say ‘no.’

That right is significant because there are not two equally powerful actors conducting international waste transactions. A shipment can be legal without being just. A nation can say ‘yes’ to accepting waste and communities impacted by it have limited real say in the decision. The issue of consent can be particularly complex when the government accepts imports of waste since it benefits from jobs, foreign exchange or investment, but the environmental costs are borne by populations that have little political power.

This asymmetry is apparent in the international trade of plastic waste. Although plastic-waste trade declined between 2017 and 2022, substantial exports from OECD countries to non-OECD countries continued, particularly toward Southeast Asia. The Basel Convention’s new plastic-waste provisions have enhanced global controls, but that is not enough to overcome the issue of political inequality. The problem is not only that waste is moving across the borders in a legal fashion. It is whose interests are protected when it does.

Turkey Shows That Recycling Can Shift, Rather Than Reduce, Environmental Harm

Turkey provides a tell-tale example. It has transformed the country into a big hub for European plastic waste and worries have been raised about microplastic pollution linked to plastic recycling in the Adana area. This case has far-reaching implications beyond Turkey. It reveals a disturbing paradox in the circular economy: recycling is not necessarily good for the environment when it’s referred to as recycling.

Increased movement of the recyclable materials to locations where regulatory oversight, technological ability or environmental protection is less robust can lead to a shift of environmental risk, instead of reduction, through recycling. The questions raised are thus not limited to the question of whether something is recyclable. So, where, by whom, under what conditions and at whose environmental cost are things being recycled?

Politics of waste enters into the politics of circular economy here. While the circular economy can turn waste into resources, and resources do not circulate in neutral systems. They permeate markets, borders, labor relations and regulatory regimes. Circularity can perpetuate the very inequalities it aims to tackle if the environmental impacts of processing are continually passed down to communities who have less bargaining power.

Environmental Insecurity Often Accumulates Quietly Among the Politically Weakest

The African experience makes this even more apparent. Too often, the Global South is represented as the passive destination of unwanted materials around the world. However, in African cities, informal waste workers are collecting usable materials which are not always collected by the formal sector. In Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and elsewhere, informal recyclers perform essential resource-recovery work while often operating without adequate occupational protection, social security or political recognition.

Here lies one of the great paradoxes of contemporary environmental governance: those most excluded from environmental decision-making may be performing some of its most important work. This means that waste sovereignty cannot be reduced to the ability of governments to close borders to imported waste. It must also concern who controls the conditions under which waste is recovered, processed and transformed into economic value. Informal recyclers should not simply be incorporated into global circular value chains as inexpensive labor. A just circular economy must recognize their environmental contribution, protect their livelihoods and give them meaningful influence over the systems in which their labor and environments are embedded.

This broader understanding also changes how we think about environmental security. Environmental security is conventionally associated with climate change, water scarcity, food insecurity, disasters and displacement. Waste reveals another dimension: the insecurity produced when environmental risks are systematically displaced across borders and concentrated among politically weaker populations.

Consider the chain: Consumption → waste generation → international export → processing/recycling → environmental exposure → livelihood disruption → community resistance → political conflict.

A polluted irrigation canal can threaten agricultural livelihoods. A recycling facility can become a source of neighborhood conflict. A landfill can generate political mobilization. Informal waste workers can be criminalized even while providing essential environmental services. Environmental insecurity does not therefore always arrive as a spectacular disaster. Sometimes it accumulates quietly—in polluted waterways, degraded land, unsafe workplaces and communities living with risks generated by decisions made elsewhere.

Waste Sovereignty Asks Who Has the Power to Refuse Environmental Burdens

This is why waste should be understood as an emerging politics of environmental security. The critical issue is not merely whether environmental risks exist. It is whose security is protected and whose security is sacrificed in managing them.

This also requires abandoning the image of the Global South as simply a “dumping ground.” Such language may describe a real historical pattern, but it can obscure something equally important: contestation. The Global South is not merely where waste arrives. It is also where resistance, refusal and renegotiation can begin.

China’s 2018 restrictions on foreign waste imports disrupted established global waste routes and forced exporters to search for alternative destinations. The episode demonstrated that receiving countries are not powerless endpoints in a global waste system. They can restrict imports, renegotiate arrangements, strengthen regulation and demand greater responsibility from exporters. More recent European regulatory developments likewise reflect growing recognition that international waste movements require stronger safeguards and accountability.

But the deeper question is what happens when this capacity for refusal moves beyond governments and becomes a claim made by communities and workers themselves. This is where waste sovereignty extends the environmental-justice tradition. Environmental justice has taught us to ask: Who bears the environmental burden? Waste sovereignty adds another question: Who has the authority to decide where that burden is placed—and who has the power to refuse it? The difference is profound.

The Future of the Circular Economy Depends on Material Accountability, Not Recycling Alone

A society may be protected from environmental harm only when it possesses meaningful authority over the decisions that produce environmental exposure. Security without agency is fragile. Consent without participation is incomplete. Circularity without accountability can become another form of environmental displacement. The future of the circular economy therefore depends on more than increasing recycling rates or reducing the volume of waste sent to landfills. It requires material accountability.

Producer responsibility must extend across borders. Exporting countries should remain accountable for the environmental consequences of materials they send abroad. Importing countries must retain meaningful regulatory and refusal powers. Informal recyclers should be recognized as environmental workers rather than treated merely as obstacles to formalization. And communities living alongside waste facilities must have a meaningful voice in decisions affecting their environments. The principle is simple: No society should be expected to surrender its environmental security in exchange for another society’s convenience. This principle carries implications far beyond waste policy.

Globalization has long been understood through the movement of commodities, capital, technologies and information. Increasingly, however, we must also understand it through the movement of what societies no longer want. Environmental inequality is produced not only through the extraction of resources from poorer territories but also through the geographical displacement of unwanted materials and risks. 

When the Global South Says ‘No,’ It Redefines Environmental Security

The Global South is therefore not simply where the world’s waste ends up. It is becoming a political arena in which sovereignty, economic opportunity, environmental justice and security are contested. And this may be the deeper significance of waste sovereignty.

The politics of the twenty-first century will not be shaped only by who controls oil, minerals, land or data. It will also be shaped by who controls the movement of materials that others no longer want—and, crucially, who has the right to refuse them. The question for the coming decades may therefore be deceptively simple: Who has the right to decide where the world’s unwanted materials go? The answer cannot be determined solely by those who generate the waste.

When communities and states begin answering that question for themselves, waste ceases to be merely the end of consumption. It becomes a site of political authority. And when the Global South says “no,” that refusal should not be understood simply as resistance to global trade. It may represent something more consequential: a demand to redefine who counts in the making of environmental security.

The future of environmental security will depend not only on protecting societies from environmental threats. It will depend on ensuring that no society can make itself secure by making another society environmentally insecure. That is the political promise of waste sovereignty.

Climate Change, Bangladesh.

Why Environmental Displacement Is the Next Frontier in Populist Politics

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEnvironment & ClimateHomeMigration

As climate change increasingly reshapes patterns of human mobility, it is also transforming the political foundations of democratic citizenship. In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja argues that climate-induced displacement should no longer be understood solely as a humanitarian emergency or a security challenge, but as an emerging battleground over political membership and democratic inclusion. Introducing the innovative concept of Climate Citizenship Populism, Dr. Solaja demonstrates how environmental displacement is becoming a powerful resource for exclusionary populist narratives that redefine who belongs within the democratic community. By bringing together scholarship on populism, climate mobility, and democratic citizenship, the commentary offers an original analytical framework for understanding how environmental change is reshaping contemporary political conflict and why the future of democracy will increasingly depend on how societies respond to the politics of climate-driven belonging.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja

Climate change has progressed from being an environmental issue into a central political issue in the 21st century. As the entire debate and politics concerning climate change revolved around the issues of temperature increase, carbon emission, and environmental damage, the effects of climate change do not just end there. It is transforming the patterns of human inhabitation, transforming the ways of life of people, and fundamentally changing the geographical bases on which our understanding of citizenship rests. As environmental factors drive humans away, democracies now face a crucial dilemma: Who belongs to a world changed by climate change?

This article situates climate migration at the nexus of debates surrounding democracy, citizenship and populism. While populism has been defined as the political logic that distinguishes between ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’ (Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017), it is also shaped by debates over the ‘people’ and its boundaries. Populist movements often exploit existing anxieties over economics, culture, immigration and national identity. But in a warming, changing world, climate change-induced movement of people creates a new domain for this struggle.

Climate migration has become a key tool for constructing the ‘people,’ defining who is deserving and legitimating claims to belonging.  Evidence for this transformation is widespread. The 2022 IPCC Report (2022) points to climate change as a major driver of increased human vulnerability due to weather extremes, ecosystem degradation and impacts on food and water. In recent years, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has documented that weather-related events cause the majority of new internal displacements worldwide. Nevertheless, climate-induced displacement cannot be understood in purely environmentalist terms but is a product of interactions among environmental changes, poverty, inequality, failures of governance, and armed conflict (Gemenne, 2011; McLeman, 2014). Therefore, climate migration reflects a broader set of unequal social and political relations that influence people’s ability to stay, adapt or leave their places of origin. The political debate on climate mobility, however, tends to remain framed within two dominant and limiting perspectives.

Firstly, it is widely regarded as a problem requiring a humanitarian response to protect vulnerable displaced people. Secondly, climate migrants are perceived as a threat to national security, welfare systems, labor markets, and cultural identity. Yet both approaches obscure a more profound transformation: climate migration is increasingly becoming a question of membership in the polity. The critical issue is not so much why people migrate as how existing political communities draw the boundaries of membership and belonging in the face of collapsing territorial stability. It is precisely within this terrain of uncertainty that populist politics appears particularly well positioned to thrive.

Populism is fundamentally concerned with issues of borders and political membership, often drawing on the divide between insiders and outsiders (Laclau, 2005; Müller, 2016). Climate-induced displacement offers a rich symbolic site for these populist efforts, since it is deeply entangled with concerns over the sovereignty of the nation-state, the administration of borders, the distribution of public goods, and the management of national culture. Climate migrants can thus be politically reframed not simply as dispossessed people, but as symbols of wider fears about social and political disorder.

Introducing Climate Citizenship Populism

To describe this new political tendency, this commentary introduces the term Climate Citizenship Populism. It is a variant of populism that uses environmental displacement to redraw the lines of democratic membership by defining climate migrants as a threat to the rights, resources, identity and sovereignty of a national community.

Climate Citizenship Populism is not like previous forms of political conflict over the climate, where the conflict might have been over whether climate change is occurring or over opposition to regulating it. It is based on the assumption of environmental disruption, but it is the social consequences that are politicized. Thus, the central conflict changes from a question of climate change to one of who pays the repercussions of climate change and who deserves political representation in a climate-changed world.

This analysis makes a helpful contribution to the current debate on populism in three significant ways. First, it sees climate-induced mobility as a new material trigger for populist mobilization, alongside the more commonly suggested economic insecurity, immigration, and cultural backlash. Second, it suggests that the focus of populist opposition has moved from immigration to democracy itself as the political nature of citizenship is transformed by environmental change. Third, it presents a new analytical framework—Climate Citizenship Populism—to make sense of the conversion of environmental displacement into exclusionary narratives of democratic citizenship.

The idea is to connect three lines of research that have been pursued independently so far: populism studies, climate mobility research and democratic citizenship theory. While existing studies have already provided interesting findings on adaptation and displacement, as well as on citizenship and territorial belonging, there is a lack of literature on climate migration and the governance of migration. The current body of research has shed light on migration and the governance of migration, adaptation and displacement, as well as on the relationship between territorial belonging and citizenship and rights, but there is a dearth of research on climate migration and the governance of migration. But there has been little effort to grasp how environmental displacement is influencing the political boundaries of citizenship through populist mobilization.

Climate Citizenship Populism thus draws attention to a more general shift in democratic politics. Climate change is not just an issue to be added to policy agendas but also a structural condition that alters the material and political conditions shaping societies’ notions of belonging. Populist players are now also trying to re-imagine the limits of the democratic community itself as patterns of human settlement are reconfigured amid environmental disruption. In the era of environmental disruption, patterns of human settlement are being redrawn, and populist actors are seeking to redefine the limits of the democratic community itself.

From Border Politics to Democratic Exclusion

Climate Citizenship Populism is not only possible politically; its reasoning can be seen in various regions. Whether it is a matter of humanitarianism or of political membership, sovereignty, and national belonging, a pattern is becoming increasingly recognizable: environmental displacement is increasingly understood as a political issue.

Climate mobility has increasingly been linked to broader European debates on immigration, border management, and national identity. Most contemporary migration movements are not solely a consequence of climate change, but the foreshadowing of future climate displacement has become a political issue. The incorporation of the theme of environmental mobility in more comprehensive narratives of demographic change, overburdened welfare states, housing crises and the failure of political elites to keep the nation together is becoming a hallmark of populist actors. In this sense, migrants are symbolic beings through which anxieties of globalization and social change are conveyed. It is not just the quantity, but the meaning associated with displacement in the stories of populism that has political dimensions.

These trends are also seen in North America, notably in political discussions about migration from climate-vulnerable Central America and the Caribbean. Studies have shown that economic insecurity, governance problems, and social vulnerability are interlinked with environmental pressures to shape migration decisions (McLeman, 2014; IOM, 2024). Political debates, however, tend to reduce such realities to a simple narrative about the border “crisis” and national insecurity. Climate displacement is integrated into a larger anti-immigration discourse, in which migrants serve as a symbol of the waning control of the state. Thus, environmental mobility becomes a political problem, ranging from global inequality to a perceived threat to national sovereignty.

Another facet of Climate Citizenship Populism is illustrated in the African context. In the Sahel and other affected areas of the Horn of Africa, there are growing incidences of internal, rather than trans-border, displacement driven by drought, desertification, flooding and resource pressures. These movements involve complex issues of land, livelihood, access to resources and political recognition. When resources are scarce, displaced people are sometimes portrayed as rivals for economic opportunities or public services, furthering narratives of territorial identity and belonging. In these settings, Climate Citizenship Populism does not appear as much as international border politics, but rather as a contestation over who is entitled to what land, resources, and community.

Perhaps the most profound challenge to conventional understandings of citizenship is provided by Small Island Developing States. Climate mobility raises more than just migration management questions, particularly for communities under existential threat from sea-level rise. Who, then, will be able to live on a land that is becoming uninhabitable, one where citizenship is organized? Climate displacement scholars have suggested that this type of event calls into question the notions of territorialized political membership (McAdam, 2012). They show how climate change is altering mobility patterns and destabilizing the sense of territory that underpins contemporary democratic citizenship.

Contributions to the study of Populism and Democratic Theory

Climate Citizenship Populism enriches the field of populism studies by introducing the idea that environmental disruptions should be considered a novel material condition of political mobilization. Previous scholarship has offered insightful accounts of populist politics as anti-elitism, cultural backlash, nationalism and immigration politics (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Moffitt, 2016). Climate Citizenship Populism is not an alternative to these explanations but an expansion of them, showing how political communities draw in their insiders/outsiders in the context of environmental instability.

This way of thinking takes the focus away from migration and towards citizenship. The classic discussions tend to revolve around whether migrants should be let in, kept safe, or kept out. Climate Citizenship Populism uncovers a more fundamental issue: What is the nature of democratic citizenship in an era when climate change is emerging as a primary factor in determining who can and cannot live? In this respect, climate migration is not just an issue for migration governance – it is an issue for the normative basis of democracy.

The idea also emphasizes the issue of climate justice. The concept of climate mobility is defined by deep global inequalities, including unequal historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and unequal ability to adapt to climate change (Caney, 2010; Shue, 2014). Responses to climate migration which exclude are likely to become new forms of democratic exclusion, building on the history of unequal climate impacts. There is a need for effective adaptation and migration policies and political frameworks that acknowledge shared vulnerability and differentiated responsibilities in the context of climate mobility.

Conclusion: Citizenship in a Climate-Changed World

Climate crises have become an essential part of the democratic political landscape. Along with the changing landscape of environmental mobility, environmental disruption is also changing the political questions of belonging, rights and membership. The question for democracies is not only how to deal with climate migration, but also how to maintain democratic inclusion in a world where territorial stability is no longer guaranteed.

Climate Citizenship Populism offers a framework for understanding how environmental displacement is becoming integral to current political identity and conflicts over democratic boundaries. It shows that climate change is not only adding to migration pressures, but also to political opportunities to draw lines about who is in and who is out. What this means is important. What populism is all about is the building of “the people”—and in the future, climate change will be a major factor in the picture of “the people. Debating emissions, adaptation, and environmental governance will thus be a part of the politics of the climate age, but so too will be debates over citizenship itself.

Class, industrialization and social redistribution were significant issues of the twentieth century. The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen globalization, migration and national identity come into conflict. Climate citizenship is likely to become a recurring battle in the next decades. Democracies are now at a pivotal point where they must decide whether climate insecurity strengthens their pursuit of exclusion or provides a moment to reconsider political belonging on the basis of ideas of justice, solidarity and shared fragility.

The future of democracy in a climate-changed world will ultimately depend not only on how societies respond to environmental transformation, but on how they answer the most basic political question of all: who belongs?

 

References

Benhabib, S. (2004). The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens. Cambridge University Press.

Caney, S. (2010). “Climate change and the duties of the advantaged.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13(1), 203–228.

Gemenne, F. (2011). “Why the numbers don’t add up: A review of estimates and predictions of people displaced by environmental changes.” Global Environmental Change, 21(S1), S41–S49.

Gemenne, F. (2015). “One good reason to speak of ‘climate refugees’.” Forced Migration Review, 49, 70–71.

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Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Verso.

Marshall, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays. Cambridge University Press.

McAdam, J. (2012). Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law. Oxford University Press.

McLeman, R. (2014). Climate and Human Migration: Past Experiences, Future Challenges. Cambridge University Press.

Moffitt, B. (2016). The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford University Press.

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

Mudde, C. & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Müller, J.-W. (2016). What Is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press.

Shue, H. (2014). Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection. Oxford University Press.

Maasai people.

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

by 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 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.