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Leveraging Carbon Trading for a Just Energy Transition in Kenya
Get PDFThis article explores how Kenya’s carbon trading framework can be leveraged to support a Just Energy Transition (JET) that aligns climate action with socio economic equity. While Kenya is a leader in Africa’s voluntary carbon market, exemplified by its regulatory innovations and nature-based projects, serious concerns persist regarding community marginalisation and inadequate benefit-sharing. The article critically examines Kenya’s Climate Change Act 2016, the Carbon Markets Regulations 2024, and emerging frameworks for internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) under article 6 of the Paris Agreement. It identifies key challenges, including complex approval procedures, institutional overlap, weak enforcement mechanisms, and limited capacity for community participation. The analysis proposes a suite of legal and institutional reforms: recognising carbon credits as financial instruments, expanding project eligibility to include blue carbon and urban planning, clarifying institutional mandates, and strengthening community safeguards through mandatory Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). It also advocates for streamlined regulatory processes and targeted capacity building. By embedding equity into the design and implementation of carbon markets, Kenya can transform carbon trading into a tool for inclusive development. The article contributes a critical legal perspective to the discourse on climate justice and offers policy recommendations for aligning carbon finance with constitutional values and sustainable development goals
Crossing Emotions: Chosŏn Koreans’ Emotions and Emotional Practices towards Modern Society, 1876-1896
No full textThe historiography of Korea’s modernisation has been narrated to follow a linear progressive process, resulting in rigid periodisation and binary views. This interpretation inevitably juxtaposes the concepts of tradition and modernity and oversimplifies Korean reactions to Western acceptance as a stark confrontation between traditionalists versus modernisers. However, historical time cannot be neatly divided and the intrinsic nature and assets of different societies must be taken into account as they do not converge towards a similar path of modernisation. Koreans initially engaged with and reacted to new elements through the lens of their own underlying values, which had developed over centuries, yet, less attention has been paid to the pivotal moment when Koreans encountered Western modernity. In light of this problematisation, this thesis aims to reconsider Korea’s modernisation by highlighting the experiences and recognitions of modernity among Chosŏn Koreans within their distinctive context. It examines Chosŏn Koreans’ travelogues of modern society with a particular interest in emotions and emotional expressions. Since the authors travelled in the course of their official duties and their potential readers were Chosŏn people, their writings had to transcend personal expression to conform to societal norms despite being physically abroad. Their emotions, too, had to adhere to social expectations and sometimes exploded against the violation of the ideological foundation of Chosŏn. As the emotional regime evolved over time, so did their emotions. Furthermore, they began to be triggered by various objects with multilayered implications intertwined with the social turn. In this way, this thesis vividly restores transitional Korea and illustrates the hybridity of the time while avoiding the technical application of periodic and dichotomous perspectives. Which is no different from revisiting Korea’s trajectory in itself whilst capturing its particularity. It further demonstrates why it is vital to incorporate an emotional framework in identifying Korea’s modernisation
Functions of discourses on heresy: The invention of zandaqah in the early Islamic period
No full textThis dissertation attempts to demonstrate that the Arabic word zindīq, an ambiguous appellation to discredit various targets characterized with heretical tendencies (zandaqah), functioned as a rhetorical device through which Muslim authors displayed their imaginations surrounding past events and figures, while claiming the legitimacy of their religious/political positions, during the early Islamic period. While modern scholars generally perceive the original meaning of zindīq, i.e., the meaning before its connotation expanded, to be Manichaean, this study purports that before the later third/ninth centuries the term was used among Muslims more often to indicate a denier of fundamental Islamic creeds. The original meaning of zindīq, i.e., Manichaean, was restored when different sects of heresy in Islam, such as Ismāʿīlism, were correlated with the term.It will be articulated that the ambiguity of the early use of this term allowed Muslim writers to label different groups at once, which benefitted them in the historical contextualization of their own positions. By describing zindīqs as archetypal enemies, authors connected themselves to righteous figures or regimes who fought against the heretics of old. Chapters 1-3 respectively analyses discourses concerning the history of Iranian heretics, zindīqs among Qurashī tribesmen, and religious persecution conducted by the Abbasid caliphs. The discussion reveals how views of later authors are shown in the way they describe zindīqs who lived in the past and incidents regarding them. Chapter 4 analyses the portrayal of three especially well-known zindīqs, Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs, ʿAbd al-Karīm b. Abī ʿAwjāʾ, and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, which reveals that their historical personalities were constructed during the development of different divisions of Islamic thoughts from around the third/ninth, to the fourth/tenth, centuries.Throughout the entirety of this discursive discussion, the study offers new perspectives on the significance of heresy in Islam, by determining its role as a “narrative” tool, i.e., equipment to make narratives rich with implication. Zindīqs are often more symbolic than real, and their existence in narrations enabled the articulation of Islam under its formation
Cruel Fantasies: Reading Fanon with Lauren Berlant
Get PDFThis paper reads Wretched of the Earth with Lauren Berlant, and specifically through the prism of Cruel Optimism. I propose that we might read the concept of decolonization that opens “On Violence” (decolonization as a replacement for which violence is essential) as a form of cruel optimism: a promise for the future that is shaped by the limits and violence of present conditions, and is thus eventually an obstacle to achieving the ends it promises. I further propose that such a reading reflects Fanon’s own analysis in Wretched. As part of this reading, I examine not just the question of violence but also the attachment to present-conditions that shapes the promise of decolonization, thereby rendering it cruel in the Berlantian meaning: an attachment to the future that is discovered to be either completely impossible or “too possible, and toxic.” Specifically, I ask in this context about the logic of binarism in Fanon and beyond. I end by offering a different way of imagining decolonization: through the workings of solidarity across the colonial divide and a vision of a shared future. Since this latter vision may itself be a form of cruel optimism, the question becomes about the doing of different political fantasies of freedoms – both in terms of the futures they hold open or foreclose and in terms of the strategies and tactics they summon
As protesters and politicians call for the closure of asylum hotels, what are the alternatives?
No full textClimate Vulnerability and the Cost of Debt
Get PDFWe present the first systematic investigation of the impact of climate vulnerability on the cost of sovereign debt using a sample of 46 developing and advanced countries from 1996-2016. We find that a subgroup of 25 developing countries with higher exposure to climate vulnerability – all of which are members of the V20 climate vulnerable forum – exhibit, on average, a 1.174% higher cost of debt. We estimate that 40 members of the V20 paid USD 62 billion in additional interest from 2007-2016 due to their climate vulnerability. We also find that a measure of social readiness has a negative impact on bond yields, suggesting that social and physical investments in adaptation and resilience can help mitigate climate risk-related financing costs. Our findings indicate that climate vulnerability can threaten sovereign debt sustainability and cause financial exclusion, thereby undermining investment in adaptation and accelerating a vicious cycle of climate vulnerability, debt and underdevelopment
The Political Economy of South Africa’s Post-apartheid Transition: The Rejection of Alternatives to Neoliberalism. Critical Reconstructions of Political Economy: Vol.7
No full textSouth Africa’s post-apartheid transition has proven disastrous. It is marked by the emergence of a black elite of enriched capitalists out of the globalisation, neoliberalisation and financialisation of the economy in general and of its Minerals-Energy and Financial Complex in particular. By contrast, inequalities, poverty and failing social provision have persisted. Recent attention has shifted to how this disastrous trajectory was initiated, some suggesting a lack of available alternative policy options at the time of transition. This is shown to be false with a full range of progressive alternatives being rejected with corresponding consequences, from “state capture” to electoral defeat
The Palgrave Handbook of Peace, Conflict and Security in Africa
No full textThe Palgrave Handbook of Peace, Conflict and Security in Africa is a groundbreaking reference resource that offers an interdisciplinary and decolonial exploration of peace, conflict, and security across the African continent. It features theoretical articulations that explore new approaches to peacebuilding in Africa, rethinking peacebuilding strategies and decolonized approaches to governance and peace sustainability. The volume is organized into three thematic sections—Peace, Conflict, and Security—each addressing the theoretical foundations, methodological innovations, and emerging challenges that shape Africa’s unique peace and security landscape. The chapters provide both theoretical and methodological insights while highlighting locally grounded strategies and alternatives to dominant Western frameworks
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