Carbon Credit Deal

Research has linked climate change and reproductive rights, as demonstrated by the increased exposure of women to sexual assault as they collect firewood or search for water. Such sexualized violence is prevalent in women-led rural households and highly vulnerable settings. For example, humanitarian contexts, slums, and arid areas have high rates of sexual violence due to water scarcity and poor lighting as women and adolescent girls travel long distances to access water. From an African socio-cultural context, fetching water and firewood are mainly feminine roles. Thus, energy distribution and water scarcity associated with climate change interact with gender dynamics to provide a setting for enacting sexualized violence. Freedom from sexual violence is an integral aspect of reproductive justice, a state where people have bodily autonomy and live in a safe and healthy environment that protects and upholds their reproductive rights and decisions. The question that arises is - can green projects, including the EU Green Deal, address climate change in a manner that addresses the associated sexual and reproductive justice issues in Sub-Saharan Africa?

In this contribution, the author makes three claims. First, just transition interventions around the world are dominantly insular and ‘State-first’. The dominance of nationalist just transition policy making is evident in the America-first emphasis of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the EU-first tilt of the European Green Deal (EGD). Second, the insular nature of just transition policies is hallmarking a new epoch of global injustice that, if not cauterized and dealt with early (if not already late), will become a major sphere of global inequality. Third, human and ecological wellbeing as an organizing principle, and differentiation as an implementation framework, will be key to any meaningful attempt to inject the ‘global’ into just transition.

The African Sovereign Debt Justice Network, (AfSDJN), is a coalition of citizens, scholars, civil society actors and church groups committed to exposing the adverse impact of unsustainable levels of African sovereign debt on the lives of ordinary citizens. Convened by Afronomicslaw.org with the support of Open Society for Southern Africa, (OSISA), the AfSDJN's activities are tailored around addressing the threats that sovereign debt poses for economic development, social cohesion and human rights in Africa. It advocates for debt cancellation, rescheduling and restructuring as well as increasing the accountability and responsibility of lenders and African governments about how sovereign debt is procured, spent and repaid.