Call for papers: ARUA Climate Change and Inequalities Symposium, March 2023

With the impacts of climate change progressing at a faster pace than societies can adapt, there is a need to manage intersecting crises that arise due to exacerbated inequalities and injustices between and within the world’s societies. For example, sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to some of the most unequal societies in the world, is also the most vulnerable region to climate change.

Challenges range from managing unequal access to energy, water, sanitation, transport, waste removal and other climate-sensitive services and technologies to unequal protection from the impacts of changing seasonality, extreme weather events and subsequent disasters. Effective crisis responses and transition management depend on adaptive capacities shaped by state–citizen relations, and local research is critical to finding solutions to the novel development challenges in Africa. 

The symposium will create spaces for innovative, transdisciplinary exchange to facilitate novel networks and collaborations between early and mid-career researchers, senior scholars and practitioners in understanding the relationships between these major global societal challenges. While it will be predominantly an in-person gathering, partial hybrid interfaces will be created to include those who may not be able to travel. 

The symposium seeks to address the following questions:

• How can we manage socio-technical sustainability and energy transitions in just and inclusive ways while adapting to climate impacts and managing climate, health, and security risks?
• How do societies design and implement climate action to improve sustainable livelihoods, and reduce both poverty and inequality in the Global South?
• Which data do we have and what else do we need to build solid evidence to inform decision-making processes?
• How can we finance transitional justice in a fair and equitable dialogue between the Global North and South?

Thirteen provisional themes have been identified for the symposium. Read more

Limited funding is available to support the participation costs (flights and accommodation) for five (5) early career researchers to present at the symposium. Read more

An abstract (300 words) and a short CV (2 pages) should be submitted no later than 15 November 2022. Indicate if you intend to present a paper, oral or poster. Please email your submission in a single PDF file and any questions you may have to Haajirah.Esau@uct.ac.za.

The symposium is part of the work of the Transforming Social Inequalities Through Inclusive Climate Action (TSITICA) project, a joint research project with the ARUA Centre of Excellence on Climate and Development (ARUA-CD). 

The support of ARUA and UK Research and Innovation is gratefully acknowledged.