The paper first identifies several entry points within the global climate framework to advance climate justice. It then provides insights into key findings from participatory research into community-led climate actions in Malawi and the Philippines, highlighting that affected communities are already pursuing climate justice actions that align with transformative transitional justice principles. The research shows the need for integrating communities' braided experience of harm and articulations of justice with the institutional infrastructure of the global climate regime to enable more transformative climate justice.

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.

Participants developed measures that demonstrate a more comprehensive way of conceptualising the effects of climate change – as a wide range of profound and long-lasting climate harms, rooted in and exacerbating structural inequalities – and of responding to them in backwards-looking and forward-looking ways that enable deeper social change. As such, this transformative transitional justice process represents a new methodology and opens fresh pathways towards climate justice, which bridge the local and the global.

The process consisted of four measures: 1) a truth-telling process on climate harms experiences, causes and solutions; 2) a commemoration event for past climate harms, combined with an educational workshop on future climate change responses; 3) the design and construction of a physical memorial honouring all those affected by climate harms; and 4) reform-focused advocacy for participatory climate change response planning and implementation at the municipal level.

Documenting the measures, their outcomes and the lessons learnt, this report shows what transformative transitional justice for climate harms can look like in practice, both for communities affected by climate harms and for practitioners and other stakeholders working towards transitional and climate justice. It argues that such a bottom-up process can complement and strengthen top-down national and international efforts, as well as serve as a discrete form of justice in transition itself.

For more publications, videos and images from this initiative, visit our project page.

This brief recommends structures and procedures that municipal councils and administrations can adopt to ensure a participatory approach to climate change responses in South Africa. They include, among others, collaborative assessments, establishment of representative advisory councils and community-based committees, participatory design and budgeting, and capacity building measures. Municipalities that ensure active participation can benefit not only from the expertise of local communities but also from their increased buy-in and support.

To learn more about our initiative on addressing climate harms in a participatory manner, visit our project page.

The study builds on the African Union Transitional Justice Policy's provisions for community participation and acknowledgement of both formal, state-run measures and non-formal, civil society-led measures as transitional justice. The findings show that meaningful participation requires four main commitments on the part of multilateral, state and civil society actors: 1) mainstreaming, 2) localisation, 3) decentralisation, and 4) recognition of non-formal measures. Participatory transitional justice results in more inclusive, contextualised and effective processes, with broad-based buy-in for sustainable outcomes.

For more information and publications on mainstreaming popular participation in transitional justice, click here.

The study finds that while the TRRC sought to ensure broad-based participation and to gather evidence from a range of victims/survivors and perpetrators, it fell short in areas like sexual and gender-based violence. The sensitive nature of such crimes in the context of existing socio-cultural norms and practices hindered victims/survivors from approaching the commission. Additionally, the TRRC struggled to reach communities where Jammeh has strong support, with the commission being construed as part of a political agenda. Non-formal measures, run by civil society, filled some of the TRRC's gaps and contributed to wider participation of citizens in the process.

To promote more meaningful participation in and across both formal and non-formal measures, we provide actionable recommendations for state actors, particularly state representatives on the Steering Committee leading the TRRC recommendations implementation process and the Ministry of Justice and other government ministries and agencies supporting implementation efforts. We also provide recommendations for multilateral actors supporting transitional justice in The Gambia, including international and regional organizations such as the African Union and the United Nations, state donor bodies, private foundations, and international nongovernmental organizations.

For more information and publications on mainstreaming popular participation in transitional justice, click here.