Climate justice has increasingly become a major theme of the annual COP gatherings, to the extent that the South African delegate, in advance of COP21 decried the proposed climate rescue pact as ‘climate change apartheid’. How could a process premised on nations of the world meeting to arrest a growing catastrophe be characterized by an analogy with one of the most repressive political regimes of the 20th century? What was the origin of this redeployment of the term? What African cultural and philosophical perspectives can contribute to the problem of climate change and our adaptations to changing physical environments?

Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies, and director of the African Cinema Unit at the University of Cape Town. He has published widely on the filmmaker Terrence Malick (the subject of his PhD), as well as South African film, wildlife documentary and literary fiction. He is currently working on early South African cinema and film cultures in South Africa. He is also a member of the Environmental Humanities South research program at the University of Cape Town where he is investigating climate change communication in Africa.