Climate justice starts with social justice – and with questioning who holds power
How can we respond to climate change without placing the responsibility for a systemic crisis on the people who are most directly affected by it? In the Manduriacu Valley in Ecuador, researchers from the University of Antwerp (IOB), together with the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar and the Ecuadorian Critical Geography Collective, are exploring what climate justice can mean in practice.
The project brings farmers and other local residents into dialogue with researchers, social movements and policymakers to collectively examine the environmental and social changes affecting their territories – from climate change and biodiversity loss to the pressures generated by extractive activities, agro-industrial dynamics and wider economic and political structures. Rather than starting from predefined technical solutions or asking communities simply to adapt their land use, the project creates spaces in which local actors can articulate their own priorities, knowledge and visions, while also questioning the power relations and structural forces shaping the possibilities available to them.
Through annual participatory study visits, the partners explore locally grounded pathways that can strengthen climate resilience, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and defend land, while recognising that meaningful climate action also requires addressing the wider systems that drive environmental degradation. The project therefore understands climate justice not simply as a question of adapting to climate change, but as a question of power, participation and the right of communities to shape the future of their territories.