Reframing Climate Justice: Speaker Series

Reframing climate justice: A BIPOC-led climate justice speaker series

When it comes to the climate crisis, one of the climate movement’s dominant narratives is that it will affect “future generations”. Yet, marginalised communities, including Black, indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) in Europe, are already being affected.

Systemic Justice is introducing an exciting speaker series that tells this alternative story from the perspectives of Black, indigenous, and people of colour in Europe who are actively resisting racial, social, and economic injustice.

Over five instalments, we delve into the root causes of climate breakdown and explore the links between the crisis and other systemic harms to understand the unique impacts on BIPOC communities, the community-driven action being taken to address this emergency, and how we as a climate movement can ensure no one is left behind in the pursuit of true intersectional climate justice.

Watch episode 5

In our fifth and final episode, we shine a spotlight on the collective power and creative resilience of young people in the fight for our planet’s future.

Speakers: Salam El Youssef and Denise Mundia Sala.

Watch episode 4

In our fourth episode, we examine the complex interplay between climate justice, freedom of movement, and environmental racism in Europe.

Speakers: Rose Wanjiku from International Women* Space, and Pelin Tan and Leyla Keskin from Arazi Assembly.

Watch episode 3

In our third episode, From redlining to greenling: exploring spatial injustice in an environmentally unjust Europe, we address how Europe’s historical legacy of spatial injustice has shaped contemporary environmental inequality in the context of green colonialism, eco-gentrification, and social cleansing of racialised communities living in urban and rural spaces.

Speakers: Niila-Juhán Valkeapää from the The Sámi Youth Council and Rukiatu F. Sheriff from Collective Against Environmental Racism.

Watch episode 2

In our second episode, Uncovering the racialised origins of the climate crisis: A look into eco-imperialism, we explore the historic role of colonialism in the extraction of wealth and subsequent conquest, disinheritance, and dispossession of racialised peoples from nature.

Speakers: Mama D. Ujuaje from Community Centred Knowledge and Nary Götze from Black Earth Kollektiv.

Watch episode 1

In our first episode, we uncover the transformative potential of climate justice and intersectional approaches to the climate crisis. As we look back on the history of climate justice and its roots in Black liberation movements, we begin to explore the relevance that these approaches have in today’s fight for a just world, and how BIPOC communities in Europe are developing real solutions to respond to the disproportionate impacts of climate breakdown. From here, we can begin to make the necessary shift from ‘climate change’ towards an intersectional climate justice perspective.

We launched our inaugural episode at the Othering & Belonging conference held in Berlin on 27 October 2023. You can watch the live video recording of the episode on our YouTube channel or below.