By Obakeng Ramare
The Climate Justice Project seeks to create a space where those directly impacted by climate change can share their concerns, stories, and ideas about how to respond to their immediate needs and build resilience, while building the community agency to articulate their issues to contribute to ensuring a transition that is just and equitable.
A critical focus of the project revolves around ensuring that global priorities and local realities are able to engage in dialogue which recognises the importance of each. Decisions taken at the local level have a significant contribution to make towards the resolution of the global crises. By the same token decision that are taken at a global level often have severe consequences at the local level.
The need to build strong resilient organisational structures in communities that are both marginalised and directly impacted by climate change, are critical to addressing the egregious structural violence that continues to legitimise patterns of disadvantage, such as racial and gender inequality.
As a national movement representing marginalised and impacted communities, MACUA and WAMUA have understood that the members and communities of mining affected communities, who are mainly rural and peri urban, and who live cheek by jowel with some of the most ecologically harmful industries, are at the coal face of the most severe climate impacts. As such the movement has an obligation to highlight and inform the community and to build their agency to advance their own interests.
Through building the agency of the community to address the issues that affect them, we hope to build stronger communities who are well informed, able to produce their own knowledge and develop action plans to challenge or address those issues directly.
The project aims to build sustainable structures at community level that would lay the foundations for community organisations that are able to manage and account for funds which in turn will lend it credibility in pursuing other sources of support and funding in the community and beyond
The post Building the climate justice agency can help mitigate the impact of the climate crisis by enhancing climate justice literacy and promoting behaviour changes necessary to adapt to climate change. first appeared on MACUA.
