193.1
About Some Tensions in the Building Process of Climate Justice Movements
My intervention will focus on key tensions in the building process of climate justice movements in Europe and in Maghreb. My fieldwork on different branches of this burgeoning network on this side of the Atlantic Ocean underlined a structural issue: the discrepancies between the global climate justice framework and the way most local struggles against high carbon-emitting projects think and organize themselves.
Indeed, the collectives for climate justice based in Paris that I followed and participated in during two years – in their majority composed of urban, white, middle-class activists – seek to articulate their involvement in solidarity with "frontline communities", whether they are in Europe or not. By contrast, the latter make little to no reference to the concepts of "climate justice", "environmental inequalities", "political ecology" etc.
My presentation will in particular draw from a blockupy movement against an airport project in Brittany, as well as a toxic tour collective that aims at bringing attention to territorial pollution in Paris suburbs. It will also summon the perspectives of activists, notably from Maghreb, that denounce the neo-colonial potential of the climate justice movement.