During 2019, it became increasingly popular for countries to declare a climate emergency – often on demand of their citizens. As such, the term ‘climate emergency’ had a significant increase in usage and got dubbed the Word of the Year 2019. In an effort to investigate discourses around ‘climate emergency’, I used a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis with framing theory, as used in ecolinguistics, and compared with ‘climate change’; the UK parliamentary climate emergency declaration was used as the point of comparison. I compiled a corpus of almost 100,000 words (consisting of news articles) for each term in the time period Jan-Aug 2019 (four months before and after the declaration). The results showed that there were three overlapping frames (politics, problem, threat) – as well as three unique frames for ‘climate change’ (war, cause, predicament). There were no differences in what frames occurred before and after the climate emergency declaration, but there were differences in the words included in the frames – both in terms of frequency and what words were used.

This design project investigates how intersectional feminist politics can be applied to challenge the fast fashion industry in the context of the climate and ecological emergency (CEE). Here fashion is understood as all that we use to visually craft our identities, an expanded conceptualisation that removes the problematic modern-traditional (or Western-Other) binary. The dominant fashion model is contextualised in a global capitalist system driven by an economic growth agenda that is reliant on exploited labour and material throughput surpassing planetary boundaries. During Fashion Revolution Week, the author undertook an action research process to expose the asymmetric relations embedded in fashion systems of provision, and to propose a transition towards non-exploitative relations. The resulting design proposals are intended as an advanced starting point for a systemic re-making of fashion from a holistic sustainability perspective. The author and a small team of colleagues 'stray together' (Mareis and Paim, 2021, p. 21) from traditional design processes, resulting in a series of creative, educational and social events that bring together a community oriented towards change.

[pt] Em 2021, o Dia da Sobrecarga da Terra ocorreu em 29 de julho e, desde então, a população passou a estar em débito com o planeta, já que aquilo que é consumido, não corresponde ao que ele é capaz de produzir no período de 12 meses. Trata-se de uma relação desarmônica que corrobora com o estado de emergência climática atual, onde a busca por recursos naturais mostra-se cada vez mais predatória. Neste estudo observamos, a partir de revisão bibliográfica, que alguns grupos sociais suportam os efeitos da emergência do clima de maneira desigual, e nos propusemos a observar o tema a partir da ótica da justiça climática. Foi o Acordo de Paris o responsável por introduzir, em 2015, este conceito nas discussões sobre o meio ambiente e o clima, ainda que sem determinar seu significado. O presente trabalho discute esses aspectos a partir da visão do Sul-Global e lê o Decrescimento como possível opositor ao Antropoceno. Concluímos que uma construção epistemológica unificada do termo justiça climática pode não ser tão factível quanto uma perspectiva que abrange múltiplas possibilidades. / [en] In 2021, Earth Overshoot Day took place on July 29 and, since then, the population has been in debt to the planet, as what is consumed does not correspond to what it is capable of producing in the period of 12 months. It is a disharmonious relationship that corroborates the current state of climate emergency, where the search for natural resources is increasingly predatory. In this study, we observed, based on a literature review, that some social groups bear the effects of the climate emergency in an unequal way, and we proposed to observe this from the perspective of climate justice. The Paris Agreement was responsible for introducing this concept in discussions on the environment and climate in 2015, although without determining its meaning. The present work discusses these aspects from the perspective of the Global South and reads Degrowth as a possible opposition to the Anthropocene. We conclude that a unified epistemological construction of the term climate justice may not be as feasible as a perspective that encompasses multiple possibilities.

Yes / Endowed with a significant proportion of the world’s petroleum and solid mineral resources, Africa is the location of a vibrant and dynamic extractive industries sector, which today, is its chief economic mainstay. The revenue generated from the extractive industries has been a significant source of finance for public infrastructure development and investments in education, health and the development of other economic sectors across the continent. However, the African extractive industries have faced massive setbacks in recent years, in particular due to the economic disruptions caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and the global transition to a low carbon economy that has formed a central part of ongoing efforts to respond to the climate change emergency. These challenges have accentuated concerns on the current and future relevance of the African extractive industries in a low-carbon economy world order. This article examines the role played by the African extractive industries in the global energy transition, contextualising these concerns against a continuum of disruption arising as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and emergent efforts to redress the crisis posed by anthropogenic climate change. If well managed, extractive resources could play a crucial role in advancing energy security and transition in the African continent in the face of these challenges. In addition to its role in addressing current high levels of energy poverty across Africa in this disruptive setting, environmentally-responsible production of extractive resources can help sustain economic and social development across Africa in going forward. This article examines the current opportunities and challenges for cleaner and environmentally-responsible extractive investments in Africa in a low carbon world. It analyses the preconditions and barriers to environmentally-responsible fossil fuels developments in Africa and highlights the key considerations for African policymakers. Its analysis is informed by recognition of, and sensitivity towards, the extreme disruption to fossil fuel governance embodied by the twin concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current “climate emergency.” Through a qualitative analysis, this research has found that if well-managed, African resource-rich countries could utilise the revenues from the extractive industries to invest in low carbon technologies.