Reparative justice and the colonial continuum: towards a Pan-African Research and Policy Agenda on Climate Reparations

1 INTRODUCTION

Despite more than three decades of multilateral negotiations, anthropogenic global warming is set to exceed levels deemed safe for human life and ecosystems. The climate crisis has far-reaching consequences particularly for the African continent and its peoples, in particular women and marginalised groups, who have contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions.1 As this article argues, their position of vulnerability is the result of centuries of colonial exploitation, and its ongoing legacy perpetuated in the form of racial capitalism.

Racial capitalism describes how systems of economic accumulation have always relied on racial hierarchies to define whose lives and environments are expendable. It emerged historically through slavery, colonisation, and imperial extraction, where race was used to justify the violent appropriation of land, labour, and natural resources for profit. Far from being a past phenomenon, racial capitalism continues to shape the contemporary global economy, in which patterns of production, trade, and debt reproduce racialised inequalities between the Global North and the Global South.2 Táíwò further situates this within what he calls a Global Racial Empire, a legal and economic order maintained by norms and institutions that preserve the unequal distribution of wealth, infrastructure, and ecological risk across racialised lines. In this sense, the climate crisis is not merely an environmental problem but the cumulative outcome of a global system that has long treated Black and colonised peoples - and their lands - as sources of extraction and sites of sacrifice zones.3

Climate change is often addressed without reference to the colonial histories and racialised power structures that have made African societies disproportionately vulnerable to its effects. At the same time, there is scope for reparations efforts on the continent to engage more deeply with the climate crisis as a site of historical and structural injustice. This disconnect overlooks not only the colonial roots of climate harm, but also the transformative potential of climate reparations to reimagine global power relations and build a more just future. A Pan-African research and policy agenda must begin by bridging this gap - tracing how past and present injustices intersect in the climate crisis, and how reparations can serve as a pathway toward structural transformation.

To respond to this injustice, we advocate for a Pan-African agenda that integrates climate reparations into broader reparative justice efforts and explicitly addresses the colonial legacy of the climate crisis and the racialised violence it perpetuates. African climate reparations would not only aim to remedy climate harms or loss and damage, but serve to reconfigure relations between the Global South and the Global North and fundamentally transform our systems of planetary governance towards a more equitable future for Africans and Afro-descendants.

While there are many lessons to be learned from reparatory justice efforts in the Caribbean, and advocacy by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) on obligations to redress climate harms, continental African advocacy on climate reparations remains far and between. Developing a Pan-African research and policy agenda on climate reparations could be a step towards remedying this gap, to facilitate the sharing of experiences from other regions, and to galvanise climate justice and reparatory justice efforts on the continent through a common narrative.

With the African Union branding 2025 a year of ‘Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations’, with the first Brazilian climate COP in November, and the various advisory opinions from international courts and tribunals delivered and expected this year - including the recent petition before the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights - the momentum is ripe for deep mobilisation around this important topic. The recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the obligations of States in respect of climate change, in particular, further anchors this momentum in law.4 It affirms that States failing to prevent climate harm, act diligently, or cooperate in good faith may incur reparations under international law. This development strengthens the case for linking climate justice and reparatory justice within a shared framework of responsibility and transformation.

This article sets out the historical context of the climate crisis, in particular its colonial origins and continued legacy in the form of constructed vulnerability, racial capitalism, and climate action. We then identify gaps in the current multilateral response to climate change with regards to reparatory justice and vice versa in the African reparations space when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. Subsequently the paper lays out the rationale for a Pan-African research and policy agenda on climate reparation, reflecting also on potential challenges and limitations. Finally, the paper charts possible future research and policy directions to support this agenda and offers some conclusions.

2 AFRICA’S CLIMATE VULNERABILITY AS A COLONIAL INHERITANCE

This section sets out the historical context of the climate crisis, highlighting its origins in colonial systems of domination and exploitation that reshaped African societies and ecologies for the benefit of imperial powers. It examines how colonial-era structures have produced and continue to reinforce Africa’s vulnerability to climate harms, not as a natural condition, but as a consequence of racialised extraction and dispossession. Tracing these legacies into the present, the section shows how the climate crisis constitutes a continuation of colonial harm and how prevailing responses to it reproduce that colonial legacy.

3 GLOBAL CLIMATE GOVERNANCE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF STRUCTURAL INJUSTICE

Despite growing recognition of the need for climate justice, global climate governance has failed to confront the structural and historical injustices that shape Africa’s climate vulnerability. From its inception, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sidestepped the issue of historical responsibility, prioritising technical fixes and market-based instruments while systematically avoiding any serious reckoning with the colonial systems that produced, and the neocolonial systems sustain the climate crisis.

While the principle of ‘Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities’ (CBDR-RC) was enshrined in article 3(1) of the Convention, it has been progressively weakened in practice.39 CBDR-RC affirms that while all countries share a responsibility to act on climate change, those with greater historical emissions and greater capacity - primarily in the Global North - should take the lead. In theory, this principle acknowledged inequality in both contribution to the crisis and ability to respond. In practice, however, the climate regime has consistently evaded questions of liability and historical responsibility. Global North countries have resisted any interpretation of CBDR-RC that would imply obligations for redress or reparations.

This evasion is especially stark in debates over how to deal with the adverse consequences of climate harms that cannot be mitigated or adapted to Loss and Damage (L&D). The concept was first introduced by small island states in 1991 and repeatedly raised by vulnerable states throughout three decades. However, developed countries consistently resisted any references to liability and compensation, ensuring that reparative justice remains absent from the climate regime to date.40 Article 8 of the Paris Agreement avoids any language of accountability, and paragraph 51 of decision 1/CP.21 explicitly excludes liability and compensation. Even the creation of a dedicated Fund for responding to L&D finally established at COP27 and operationalised at COP28 eschews any framing of compensation or accountability for past harms. Voluntary pledges to date to this fund fall well below the level required: less than $1 billion against estimated annual needs of $400 billion.41

This failure is not simply technical or financial - it reflects a deeper misalignment between the nature of the problem and the regime designed to address it. The UNFCCC operates within an architecture that preserves rather than dismantles colonial patterns of extraction. By focusing on emissions metrics, technological fixes, and market-based instruments, it obscures the structural drivers of the climate crisis. Emissions trading, carbon offsets, and insurance-based mechanisms inherently diffuse and displace responsibility, reward financial intermediaries, and perpetuate asymmetries in knowledge and power and thereby reproduce the same colonial hierarchies that underpinned the climate crisis. Scholars such as Sandel,42 Bachram,43 and Hickel44 argue that commodifying pollution not only delays decarbonisation but reinforces extractive logics. Essentially, these approaches are old wine in new bottles - that is, they repackage extractivism in new forms. These mechanisms marginalise Global South epistemologies and grassroots responses, echoing critiques by Sultana45 and Claar46 on epistemic violence in climate governance. As a result, the regime fails to deliver equitable or transformative outcomes. A reparative approach would require re-centring historical accountability, embedding justice in finance and mitigation, and amplifying African and Indigenous knowledge as foundational to global solutions.

4 AFRICAN REPARATIONS MOVEMENTS: CLIMATE CRISIS AS MISSING LINK?

During the past three decades, efforts on the African continent to advance reparations for slavery, colonialism, and economic exploitation have gained increasing traction. Initiatives such as the 1993 Pan-African Conference on Reparations and its Abuja Proclamation, the 1999 African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission; the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and subsequent establishment of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; the 2023 establishment of the African Union’s Global Reparations Fund, and the most recent designation by the AU of 2025 as the year for Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations all contribute to a growing regional momentum around historical redress. For the most part these political efforts have centred on the transatlantic slave trade, colonial occupation, and the persistence of illicit financial flows that have siphoned wealth from African economies since independence. As a result of these initiatives, and the political leadership of the AU, calls for the restitution of looted cultural artefacts, demands for debt cancellation, and claims for financial compensation from former colonial powers have become increasingly visible in both diplomatic and civil society spheres.

These reparatory justice efforts have yet to meaningfully engage with the climate crisis, given its disproportionate and intensifying impact on African peoples and ecosystems. The relative absence of climate change from ‘traditional’ reparations frameworks reflects broader conceptual and institutional silos that still characterise climate harms as natural hazard or environmental damage rather than recognising it as a form racial and colonial injustice in itself. This conceptual separation obscures the structural continuity between colonial and climate harms. When climate change permeates reparations discussions, it is all too frequently framed as a contemporary and future-oriented problem, with its colonial and racial justice dimension mentioned in passing, if at all.

Arguably, it is also a matter of diplomatic strategy among some African governments, particularly within the multilateral climate regime, to play by the rules and seek solutions from within rather than outright reform. This is not surprising, given the contentious nature of climate finance negotiations and the Global North’s long-standing refusal to provide redress. African negotiators have thus commonly prioritised securing concrete gains on adaptation and development finance, rather than explicitly calling for climate reparations. This is not to say that there have not been exceptions. In 2009, for example, African leaders meeting in Ouagadougou made strong demands going into the Copenhagen Climate Summit (COP15). Chief among them, then AU Commission Chair Jean Ping declared: ‘We have decided to speak with one voice and will demand reparations and damages.’53 However, under pressure to secure any funding at all, the African Group of Negotiators ultimately scaled back its demands. Meles Zenawi, then Chair of the Group, proposed a more modest ask aligned with EU and UK climate finance pledges, ‘in return for more reliable funding and a seat at the table in the management of [the] fund’.54 This drew sharp criticism from fellow negotiators like Sudan’s Ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping, who called the resulting Copenhagen Accord ‘a suicide note for Africa’.55 This episode reflects the structural limitations of the UNFCCC process and the diplomatic trade-offs African governments often face. Nonetheless, many African governments continue to hold onto the multilateral process and seek solutions within the UNFCCC. With industrialised countries weakening the design and governance of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage - and failing to provide adequate funding - its prospects for becoming an effective and equitable vehicle for reparative justice appear increasingly bleak.56

That being said, during the past three years there has been some movement in this space, coinciding with or perhaps mutually reinforcing policy advances on loss and damage. Based on a brief review of decisions and statements by the representatives from the AU and African governments in the UNFCCC and international courts and tribunals, we observe the following shifts:

Firstly, increased collaboration across the continent and with the African Diaspora has resulted in more explicit recognition of the linkages between climate justice and reparatory justice. A notable example is the Accra Proclamation on Reparations emanating from the 2023 Accra Conference, where delegates noted the ‘impact of environmental damage caused by the exploitative forces of colonialism and through the forced relocation of enslaved African labour to other regions’. Delegates further committed to ‘supporting efforts campaigning for the compensation of the people of African descent suffering from those effects’.57

Secondly, African governments have increasingly framed climate justice in terms that resonate with reparative justice principles, linking climate vulnerability to systemic inequities in the global financial architecture. Debt cancellation, in particular, has emerged as a core demand, framed not as charity but as a necessary rectification of structural injustice. During proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on an advisory opinion to clarify state obligations for climate change, for instance, the African Union, alongside Kenya, Sierra Leone, Namibia, and Malawi, argued that partial or total debt cancellation could constitute a form of compensation for climate-related harms.58 At COP29, the African Group of Negotiators called for reform of the international financial architecture, including concessional climate financing and a ‘fit-for-purpose’ new finance goal.59 Their critique of climate coloniality points to the ways in which global finance institutions such as the IMF and World Bank continue to entrench postcolonial hierarchies, reproducing dependencies that limit Africa’s fiscal space to respond to climate shocks. These calls are grounded not only in demands for increased funding but also in a deeper critique of how finance is structured and who controls it.

Thirdly, the AU appears to be stepping up its rhetoric, increasingly recognising the linkages between colonialism and the climate crisis and laying the foundations for a Pan-African movement. At its 37th Ordinary Session in Addis in February 2024, the AU Assembly recognised ‘in the same context of reparatory justice [...] the need to address the consequences of transatlantic-enslavement, colonialism and apartheid, which have persisted in many forms including, among others, neo-colonial challenges of debt relief, illicit financial flows, and climate change, as well as loss and damage’.60 Similarly, before the ICJ the AU advocated for ‘reparation and compensation’ and ‘ensuing reallocation of any responsibility to the colonial power’.61 This marked shift in framing signals a closer alignment with decolonial approaches and provides high-level recognition of the structural drivers and colonial legacies underpinning the climate crisis. What remains to be seen is whether this rhetorical shift will translate into political advocacy to decolonise the institutions fueling the climate crisis and global responses in the name of climate action.

Fourthly, African civil society has been even more explicit in its reparations framing. Organisations such as AFRODAD and ActionAid have emphasised the interlinkages between colonial debt, climate injustice, and demands for systemic overhaul. ActionAid’s 2024 report “Who Owes Who?” calls for the establishment of a new international convention on debt that would replace the colonial-era norms embedded in current global institutions. It urges the African Union to lead a coordinated demand for debt cancellation as partial repayment of the broader climate debt owed by the Global North. At the national level, countries like South Africa have signalled their alignment with these positions. During its G20 presidency, South Africa emphasised climate finance and debt relief as priorities, with President Cyril Ramaphosa calling for urgent financial support for nations affected by climate disasters. These emerging alignments between negotiators and civil society actors reflect a growing convergence around the need for structural transformation where climate reparations are not merely about compensation but about reclaiming African agency and rebalancing global power relations.

Fifthly, alongside political and advocacy efforts, a budding scene of African-led and Africa-focused research is beginning to articulate the contours of a climate reparations agenda rooted in the continent’s lived realities. While conceptual and normative inquiries are gaining

traction,62 empirical case studies remain few and far between. A recent study estimates that Germany owes Cameroon approximately €38 billion in climate reparations, drawing on Germany’s historical greenhouse gas emissions and its colonial-era involvement in Cameroon as key justifications for this claim.63 The study calls for a multifaceted approach to reparations, including debt cancellation, contributions to the Loss and Damage Fund, and bilateral agreements that acknowledge colonial histories.

This type of grounded research is essential to translating abstract claims into actionable demands. Scholars such as Hamouchene and Sandwell,64 Majekolagbe, Gathii and Tamale,65 Akinkugbe,66 and Kaboub67 are linking colonial extractivism with contemporary energy and climate policy, offering sharp critiques of green colonialism, debt and dependence on resource exports. Research networks like the Post-Colonialisms Today collective68 have produced rigorous analyses linking debt, extractivism, and environmental harm to historical patterns of colonial domination. However, much more is needed to build a robust evidence base that can inform policy and advocacy. There are still few coordinated research or advocacy networks in Africa explicitly framing climate change within a reparations discourse. Strengthening Africa-based research institutions, funding interdisciplinary studies, and fostering collaboration across regions will be crucial for grounding a Pan-African reparations agenda in the diverse social, ecological, and historical contexts that shape climate harm on the continent.

To build a Pan-African climate reparations agenda, it is crucial to confront this disjuncture. Reparative justice in Africa cannot be complete without addressing the climate crisis as a continuation of colonial harm. Versa, climate reparations advocacy stands to benefit by drawing on the rich intellectual, legal, and political traditions of continental African, Afro-descendant and diaspora reparations movements. The task ahead is not to replace one agenda with the other, but to integrate them, grounding climate action in historical justice, and making reparations responsive to the ecological realities of African peoples today.

5 TOWARDS A PAN-AFRICAN CLIMATE REPARATIONS AGENDA

This section develops the normative, political, and conceptual contours of a Pan-African climate reparations agenda. It explores the key elements and the transformative potential of climate reparations, highlighting why reparations must be understood not as retrospective compensation alone, but as a forward-looking process of structural transformation to build just, decolonial futures. Grounded in principles of structural justice and Pan-African solidarity, this section sets out a vision for reparations that is forward-looking, intersectional, and rooted in the lived experiences and political aspirations of African peoples.

Climate reparations offer a transformative framework to address the intersecting harms of racial injustice and ecological crisis as mutually constitutive legacies of colonialism. Grounded in traditions of reparatory justice, the concept draws from a range of intellectual, legal, and political sources, including international human rights law, state responsibility, and moral and historical claims for justice. At its core, climate reparations call not only for redress of historical harm, but for the dismantling of the systems that continue to produce that harm.

Building on the work of Burkett,69 Klinsky,70 Riley-Case,71 Dehm,72 and Táíwò,73 climate reparations are best understood not as a one-time financial transaction, but as a multi-dimensional and forward-looking process. A comprehensive reparations framework may include five key elements: (1) an acknowledgment of wrongdoing through formal apology; (2) restitution, including the restoration of climate victims’ agency, property, lands, and/or livelihoods; (3) rehabilitation, through investments in health, education, and social infrastructure; (4) compensation (monetary or other); and (5) guarantees of non-repetition, entailing the cessation of ongoing climate harm by limiting greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing adaptation.

This framework foregrounds victims’ experiences and demands not only material relief, but structural transformation. As Dehm and Riley Case argue, climate reparations are not a transactional remedy but a deliberative and forward-looking process of healing.74 They are defined as much by how they are pursued as by what they aim to deliver. As such, any climate reparations process must be grounded in the lived experiences and leadership of climate victims and affected communities. Climate reparations then, should be understood as a political project that transforms power relations, not merely one that distributes money or blame. Riley-Case and Dehm further highlight that in the climate context, reparations function as a deliberative process that can open up space for new forms of solidarity, knowledge, and transformation.

It is this transformative conceptualisation of (‘expansive’) reparations that informs our understanding of climate reparations in this paper. This aligns with what Táíwò terms a constructive view on reparations, suggesting that such processes are as much about reimagining the future as about rectifying the past. He illustrates the challenge and vision of this approach:75

We’re going to have to build a new energy system than the one that was built by this very same history and out of these very same economic and political connections. And that is going to be, in part, about dismantling a system that runs on fossil fuels, but is going to be in the very same strokes for the very same set of reasons, a set of putting something else in place that is likewise just as valuable. Is that system one that provides energy access and security for all? That’s compatible with housing security for all? That gives everyone basic material resources? Or is it one that exploits the many for the security of the few? The status quo is pushing us in the latter direction, but reparations and justice and reparations would push us towards the former.

Climate reparations then offer an integrated approach to justice, bringing together decolonial, racial, and climate justice claims into a coherent framework that can guide both advocacy and policy. Rather than being confined to legal doctrine or imposed solutions, reparations are both a principle and a process: they involve recognition of past wrongdoing, redistribution of wealth and power, and the transformation of institutions that uphold unjust systems. They invite co-creation between affected communities and those who have benefited from historical harm, centring the demands, knowledge systems, and lived experiences of those who have long been silenced or sidelined. In doing so, climate reparations challenge racial capitalism, resist technocratic and debt-based responses to the climate crisis, and offer a strategic frame for building solidarity across movements and shifting global priorities.

In sum, this emerging body of work converges around a few key principles: that climate reparations must address both historical and ongoing harms; that they must target the root causes of inequality, not just its symptoms; and that they must be shaped by those most affected. In this sense, climate reparations represent both a political demand and open a horizon for transformative justice.

Our intention in advocating for a Pan-African perspective on climate reparations, is not to impose it as a framework to blindly/paternalistically homogenise cultures, histories and contexts, and priorities on the continent and in the diaspora. Rather, the power of Pan-Africanism lies in offering a unifying political orientation grounded in the shared experiences of colonialism. Here we draw on the work of Perry who initially put forward Pan-Africanism as ‘an ideological and movement-building tool for reparative approaches to climate change’.76 A Pan-African climate reparations agenda should build on the movement’s emphasis on continental solidarity and institutional integration, while remaining firmly rooted in specific lived experiences of climate harms by Africans and Afro-descendants. Here again, Perry is instructive, who cautions, ‘Pan-Africanism was always practiced from below [...]. Pan-Africanism from the top was never going to create the necessary material and political impulses for legitimate reparatory demands to be met’.77 Local movements, national case studies, and regionally distinct histories of harm must therefore remain central to the articulation of reparative claims. One of the tasks then, of a Pan-African climate reparations agenda, will be to draw lessons from grassroots and civil society movements, national, subnational and local case studies and testimonies of concrete experiences of climate harms to inform an African regional strategy. This necessitates trans-disciplinary research with communities on the frontlines of climate harm and empowering grassroots advocacy in the formulation of the agenda and its implementation.

6 FUTURE RESEARCH AND POLICY DIRECTIONS

In this final section we outline key future directions for advancing a Pan-African climate reparations agenda through grounded research and coordinated policy. The proposals below do not claim to be exhaustive or prescriptive. Instead, they aim to support a collective process of inquiry, policy design, and advocacy that can deepen the evidentiary base, strengthen institutional mechanisms, and build solidarities - within Africa and with other regions in the Global South - toward transformative climate justice.

7 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we argued that Africa’s climate vulnerability cannot be addressed without reckoning with the continent’s colonial past and the racialised systems of extraction and exploitation that continue to structure global environmental and economic relations to the detriment of Africans and people of African descent. Climate justice, in this sense, cannot be separated from historical justice. Any serious response to the climate crisis must confront the legacies of conquest, slavery, and colonialism that have shaped the distribution of harms and benefits within the global order. So long as global climate governance remains structured around managing symptoms rather than tackling the disease of neocolonial racialised extractivism, it will continue to reproduce the very injustices it claims to solve.

While the ICJ has since reaffirmed the legal foundations of States’ obligations to prevent climate harm and cooperate in good faith, the advisory opinion remains silent on the colonial and racial structures that underpin these harms, underscoring the need for a reparations agenda that goes beyond state responsibility toward structural transformation.

We put forward the need for a Pan-African climate reparations agenda not only as a demand for redress but also as a transformative framework for justice. This agenda insists on confronting root causes, reclaiming African agency, and shifting global priorities away from extractive and technocratic solutions. Such a climate reparations research and policy agenda could build from, and move beyond, existing historical reparations frameworks. It offers a vision of justice that is both backward-looking and forward-building, grounded in historical responsibility and committed to constructing more equitable futures. For such an agenda to take hold, it must be shaped by participatory, interdisciplinary, and cross-movement processes anchored in African realities and informed by the leadership and priorities of those most affected.

The reflections and proposals presented in this paper do not claim to be comprehensive. Rather, they serve to chart a path forward: to open space for research, dialogue, and collective imagination. It is an invitation for African scholars, policymakers, activists, and communities to co-create a climate justice agenda that centres historical truth, redistributive justice, and structural transformation. This is a complex and contested undertaking, but one that is urgent and necessary.