Affective climate injustice: Decolonizing pathways for climate justice education

Abstract

This conceptual paper brings together scholarship on climate coloniality and affective injustice to propose a reframing of climate justice education (CJE) that foregrounds the affective dimension of the climate crisis. In particular, the paper introduces the concept of affective climate injustice to capture how climate change not only devastates environments and livelihoods but also inflicts profound emotional harm. Emotions such as grief, rage, and exhaustion are unequally distributed and often delegitimized, particularly when voiced by marginalized communities, including Indigenous peoples, racialized groups, and those in the Global South. By advancing the notion of affective climate injustice as an analytic lens, the paper suggests that CJE can more fully acknowledge these asymmetries and cultivate practices of care and relationality. Such an approach offers alternative pathways for advancing climate justice, especially in contexts where direct discourses are under attack. The paper highlights the theoretical and pedagogical implications of this framework for reimagining CJE.