# Africa's Agency in Global Climate Governance — Carl Death

An episode of [The IR thinker](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1716817337), 25 May 2026, 1 h 12 min.

Audio: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/655776911a7d7e0012cbc914/e/6a14d3718ff41815a82d5332/media.mp3

This episode explores African agency in global climate governance, moving beyond narratives that portray African states solely as vulnerable recipients of climate policy. Drawing on debates in International Relations, environmental politics, and African climate futures, Dr Carl Death examines how African actors negotiate, contest, and reimagine climate governance across local, continental, and global arenas. Carl Death is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on environmental politics in Africa, with a particular interest in critical and postcolonial approaches. Selected Publications • The Green Economy in South Africa: Global Discourses and Local Politics • Four Discourses of the Green Economy in the Global South • Green States in Africa: Beyond the Usual Suspects • Africanfuturist Socio‐Climatic Imaginaries and Nnedi Okorafor’s Wild Necropolitics • Climate Fiction, Climate Theory: Decolonising Imaginations of Global Futures • Unfamiliar Families and Disturbing Climate Futures • Narrating Transitions to Low Carbon Futures: The Role of Long-Term Strategies in Fossil Fuel Producing Emerging Economies • African Climate Futures Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:30 African agency in global climate governance: realities versus stereotypes 10:21 Writing climate transition differently: fiction as method 13:32 Universal models and African political economies 18:04 Pan-Africanism and coordination in climate governance 23:25 Key actors in Africa’s climate and energy transition 27:19 Climate fiction and African agency: insights from fifteen authors 32:49 Selection and context of African climate fiction 38:37 Postcolonial, feminist, and queer perspectives on African climate futures 43:47 Ecopolitical imaginaries explained 48:01 Beyond limited case studies in African climate scholarship 54:51 Challenges in writing the book 58:51 Local politics and environmental governance 01:02:25 Civil society and grassroots climate action 01:08:59 Under-researched areas in African climate politics Follow & Further Resources Substack: https://theirthinker.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theirthinker/ X: https://x.com/theirthinker Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theirthinker/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/theirthinker.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theirthinker/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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