Applying this lens allows a more holistic view of both climate impacts and climate responses in Nkhulambe. Focusing on community experiences, it reveals that creeping climate change combined with disasters like Cyclone Freddy have resulted in a wider range of profound and lasting climate harms than commonly acknowledged by the public and even many climate experts. These include loss of life, physical health, homes, essential infrastructure, education, livelihoods, food security, cultural practices, social order, and mental health.

This lens also shows that residents have developed their own climate responses that respond more fully to the manifold climate harms they have experienced than top-down climate responses to date. Government-sponsored initiatives have tended to be short-term rather than sustained, and premised on one-way information transfers rather than two-way dialogue and collaboration between state actors and affected residents. In addition to being more pluralist and cooperative, residents' climate responses combine forward-looking solutions, such as emergency preparedness and reforestation, with backwards-looking solutions that acknowledge the truth of climate harms in the area and promote redress through memorialisation and advocacy for participatory reforms.

Nkhulambe residents' efforts can be read as climate-focused transformative transitional justice in practice. They are community-led measures that address climate harms which occurred in the past, while building solidarity in the present, in order to prevent and reduce the harms of future climate events. Moreover, they have the potential to complement and strengthen top-down national and international efforts, making them more inclusive and responsive to communities affected by climate harms, as well as opening the door to more equitable climate action.