Abstract: South Africa’s recurring xenophobic violence is not an isolated outbreak but a symptom of deeper structural fractures — economic inequality, political scapegoating, and the legacy of sub-imperial dominance. As retaliatory boycotts and legal challenges mount across Africa, the crisis threatens continental unity. The path forward demands both protection for migrants and accountability for the governance failures that force people to flee their homes in the first place.

Read his text here: https://irgac.org/articles/article-The-South-African-Negrophobia/

The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) is increasingly on the front lines of the climate crisis. In recent years, the region has witnessed a succession of major disasters, including Kedarnath floods in Uttarakhand in 2013, Melamchi flood in Nepal in 2021, South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in Sikkim in 2023, Thame GLOF in Nepal in 2024, Dharali disaster in Uttarakhand in 2025 and most recently, the catastrophic August 2026 flash flood in Nepal. These events exposed the region’s growing exposure to climate-related risks, including GLOFs, landslides, flash floods and related cascading hazards, posing growing threats to downstream communities and infrastructure. The hazard environment of the HKH mountain landscape also interacts with rapid hydropower and infrastructure expansion in the name of ‘green development’, posing new threats to mountain communities and infrastructure.

This interaction of growing climate threat and development practice raises a pertinent question: to what extent can green development become true climate action when it is increasingly exposed to the climate crisis? This question is particularly significant in light of the international commitment to disaster reduction under the Sendai Framework, which commits countries to substantially reduce disaster risk by 2030. With only four years remaining to achieve this goal, recurring and intensifying climate disasters in the HKH highlight the persistent gap between global commitments and the scale of action needed to tackle the climate crisis, leaving developing and climate-vulnerable countries increasingly exposed to escalating climate risk.

Vulnerability in HKH: What Nepal Disaster Reveals

The HKH, spanning eight countries, i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan, is often described as the world’s ‘Third Pole’ due to its extensive snow and ice reserves. However, the region is undergoing a rapid cryospheric transformation under climate change. Recent assessment by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) shows that the rate of glacier ice-loss in the HKH has doubled since 2000, with glaciers losing approximately 12% of their total area and 9% of their estimated ice reserves between 1990 and 2000. Increasing glacier melt and the resulting expansion of glacial lakes increase the potential for extreme events such as GLOFs, flash floods, landslides, debris flows, etc. These events also intersect with the rapidly transforming mountain economy. The expansion of hydropower projects, roads, and tourism activities, which are often presented as pathways to energy security, decarbonization, and economic development, is increasingly creating concentrated sites of risk and exposure.

The recent 27 August 2026 Nepal disaster illustrates these risks. Satellite observations indicate that a large glacier collapse near the Nepal-China border triggered a destructive cascade of ice, rock and water flowing downstream, causing the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers to overflow while destroying settlements and critical infrastructure. Thirteen operational and under-construction hydropower projects reportedly suffered direct damage, while hundreds of workers were initially unaccounted for, and subsequent reporting documented extensive loss of life and thousands of people missing. Nepal’s disaster authority estimated losses of at least US$2.56 billion, although the actual costs are socially differentiated. A political economy perspective shows that disaster is not simply a product of an extreme event; rather, it emerges through the interaction of hazard, exposure, infrastructure, institutional capacity and socially differentiated vulnerability. Financial losses to investors, reconstruction expenditure for the state and the loss of homes, livelihoods, or life are not equivalent forms of loss. These impacts intersect with multiple and overlapping inequalities of gender, class, caste, ethnicity, age and occupation, shaping who is exposed, who can access protection, and who bears the costs of disasters. The central question, therefore, is not simply whether climate change is intensifying the hazards situation, but how climate change, under the current development model, shapes who is exposed to risk, who accesses protection, and who bears the cost. These questions place climate justice at the centre of the HKH’s development trajectory.

The Geography of Responsibility and Climate Justice

The questions of vulnerability of HKH directly connect to the politics of global climate governance. In response to growing concerns over climate change, the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has, over successive meetings, provided a platform for global cooperation on mitigation and adaptation. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) recognises countries’ unequal historical contribution to the climate crisis and unequal capacities to respond. Developing countries, despite their relatively lower contribution to the climate crisis, often face greater vulnerability because of limited fiscal capacity to finance mitigation, adaptation, and disaster recovery and reconstruction. Recognising these financial challenges, successive COPs have established climate finance mechanisms to support developing countries. For example, at COP15 (2009) in Copenhagen, developed economies committed to mobilise US$100 billion annually by 2020 for developing nations, while the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was established as a key financing mechanism. The Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015 further strengthened developed nations’ financial commitments for developing countries’ mitigation and adaptation efforts. More recently, COP29 (2024) established the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), further scaled up the financial target for developed countries to US$300 billion annually by 2035, while broadening the investment goal from public and private sources to US$1.3 trillion annually. However, this expanding climate finance architecture has not necessarily translated into meaningful material support for those most vulnerable to climate risks.

Three primary impasses in mobilising climate finance to developing countries are commonly noted. First, a persistent gap remains between commitment and delivery. While developed economies committed to mobilise US$100 billion annually by 2020, they could only achieve the target for the first time in 2022, reaching US$115.9 billion. This delay highlights the difficulty in translating political commitments into predictable financial flows. Second, a substantial gap remains between climate finance delivered and finance required. Although global climate finance has expanded significantly in recent years, reaching approximately USD 2.1 trillion in 2025, it still falls short relative to developing countries’ climate-finance needs. The UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance identified that financial needs in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of 98 developing countries amount to approximately US$5.1-6.8 trillion through 2030 (UNFCCC 2024), highlighting the substantial financial gap. Third, concerns remain over the unequal geographical distribution and the quality of climate finance. According to the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2026 report (CPI, 2026), advanced economies and China roughly constitute around 80% of global climate finance flows, while it remains marginal for developing economies. Moreover, a substantial share of public finance is delivered through loans. This places the advanced countries with stronger institutions, financial systems, and project-preparation capacity in a better position to access international climate finance than poorer, more vulnerable countries already facing fiscal and debt constraints. This raises concerns about climate justice for developing nations, for whom the adequacy and accessibility of climate finance remain pressing questions.

The HKH’s Climate Finance Paradox

The climate finance paradox is clearly evident for HKH. The region, which is highly exposed to climate risks, requires enormous investment in mitigation and adaptation, especially for vulnerable countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan, which have limited fiscal capacity and are least equipped to manage these risks. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s (ICIMOD) Climate Finance Synthesis Report, the eight HKH countries collectively require approximately US$768.68 billion annually as climate finance, with China and India accounting for around 92.4% of the total projected need. The report highlights that actual disbursements remain far below actual needs, creating barriers for vulnerable countries to protect communities and livelihoods against growing climate threats. The report reveals significant gaps between committed funds and financial delivery from multinational sources across HKH countries, ranging from 19% for Nepal to 59% for Bhutan, with Bangladesh being an exception, which has experienced higher disbursements than commitments.

This gap exposes a significant asymmetry between finance required and finance delivered. It should be highlighted that any investment is easier to mobilise for infrastructure that is capable of generating financial returns. The hydro-power projects in the HKH thus attract finance, as electricity generation produces revenue. However, the adaptation investments for a climate-resilient infrastructure, such as early-warning systems, hazard mapping and assessment, risk monitoring, adaptive infrastructure, resilient design, emergency preparedness, ecological restoration, etc., which generate enormous social benefits, may not produce measurable financial returns. Thus, the finance disproportionately supports green development in the form of hydro-power projects in the region, while financing for resilient infrastructure remains substantially inadequate.

The August 26 Nepal Flash Flood exposes this asymmetry. The event reportedly destroyed thirteen operational and under-construction hydropower projects, disrupting at least 10% of Nepal’s installed electricity generation capacity. This massive destruction reveals a significant gap in investment in adaptation-related mechanisms and in designing resilient infrastructure. Hydro-power projects in Nepal have attracted international finance for mitigation-oriented mechanisms in support of expanding green infrastructure; however, these low-carbon investments are not sufficiently directed toward developing climate-resilient infrastructure. The HKH region, which has increasingly seen large-scale hydropower expansion to meet rising electricity demand and promote local economic development, must integrate climate adaptation to remain resilient, not only to pursue sustainable energy solutions but also to strengthen community resilience and reduce environmental impacts.

Rethinking Climate Finance as Climate Justice: A Way Forward

The lesson from the HKH thus broadens the question of the adequacy of climate finance to the question of what kind of development model it enables. If the finance adequately supports a ‘green’ transition, while leaving climate-risk assessment underfunded, it unintentionally reproduces new lines of vulnerability for the infrastructure as well as for the entire communities and ecosystem. Climate finance needs to integrate both mitigation and adaptation actions to make ‘green’ infrastructure climate-resilient, leading to a socially and ecologically just transition. Thus, climate finance must be directed to true climate action by integrating climate-resilient models in infrastructure. While international finance must be more adequate and accessible, enabling regulatory frameworks and stronger institutional mechanisms for resource mobilisation at the national level are equally important. Moreover, given the transboundary nature of the HKH, regional cooperation on disaster preparedness and infrastructure governance is equally necessary. Under the current climate crisis, the challenge here is not to choose between climate action and development; rather, it needs to be reconsidered what kind of development model is pursued, who finances it and who bears its risks. Climate justice in the HKH ultimately needs fairer relations between finance, development and the communities who live with its consequences.

References

ICIMOD. (2026). HKH Glacier Outlook 2026: Understanding Change Through 50 Years of Field Observation. International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu. https://lib.icimod.org/records/fk7f9-2ha88

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (2024). Second report on the determination of the needs of developing country Parties related to implementing the Convention and the Paris Agreement. Bonn: UNFCCC. UNFCCC document 641042

Climate Policy Initiative (CPI). (2026). Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2026. Climate Policy Initiative, June 2026. https://glcf.climatepolicyinitiative.org/

Ali, G., Maurya, A., Venkatramani, S., Lindhard, C., & Thapa, C. (2025). Climate Finance Synthesis Report: Assessing the needs, flows and gaps in climate financing in the HKH countries. International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). https://doi.org/10.53055/ICIMOD.1106

Abstract: ‘What is the future of humanitarian aid and development?’ is a question that many people are asking today. This article examines the limitations of both ‘classical humanitarianism’ and project-based ‘resilience humanitarianism’ approaches and compares these with ‘everyday humanitarianism’ where resilience is built from below. Based on four years of field research in northern Kenya, we highlight some of the problems with resilience projects in pastoral areas. We argue that alternatives that prioritise everyday local practices, institutions and local knowledge are more effective in building resilience against external shocks. By focusing on everyday humanitarianism and building resilience from below, an alternative humanitarian response approach is envisaged. The principles of community, connection, collectivity and care in turn suggest a path forward for rethinking humanitarianism in the context of major changes in aid funding patterns.

Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41018-026-00206-2

Abstract: Credit–debt relations between producers and so-called exploitative traders are considered a key cause of producer indebtedness. This fuels interventions to eliminate exploitative traders in commodity chains, yet alternative arrangements often fail. Therefore, indebtedness persists. This paper critically examines the conditions and practices that produce and reproduce relations of lending and borrowing and consequently indebtedness, which are closely linked to the question of what complicates changing this indebtedness. We investigated the current conjuncture of intermediation practices in Ghana’s cocoa sector, which for over a century has fostered producer–intermediary credit–debt relations and associated indebtedness. Our study analyses relations between intermediaries and producers as a credit–debt dyad constituted by social and material conditions, which foster interdependencies and generate indebtedness as an inevitable outcome. This leads to an account that centralises material conditions in the social relations of debt and exposes both cooperation and tensions in producer–intermediary relations. We show how the strategic vulnerability of producers and intermediaries in navigating the materiality of production and aggregation fosters the evolution of the credit–debt dyad as a routinised and consistent socio-material relation where the value of reciprocity inherent in it complicates changing it without a fundamental change in material realities.

Check their text here: https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2026.2691124

Abstract: Occupational pesticide exposure is a significant global health concern for agricultural workers, and research aimed at addressing it has long been shaped by the “knowledge deficit” framework, which dominates pesticide safety research and treats workers as rational actors who lack adequate information. This framing fails to account for how risk perceptions are socially organised, culturally reproduced, and structurally embedded within specific occupational contexts. This study applies Abric’s Central Core Theory (CCT) of Social Representations to examine how 20 Chilean farmworkers in the Maule Region construct and organise their understanding of occupational pesticide exposure. Using open-ended interviews analysed through Rodríguez’s (2007) qualitative methodology, central and peripheral elements were identified across four representational domains: pesticide identity and risk, routes of exposure, prevention conditions, and health and environmental effects. The analysis suggests a coherent representational system organised around a paradoxical central core: pesticides are simultaneously objectified as “liquids”, normalising their use as routine agricultural matter, and recognised as “poison,” acknowledging their danger. The functional logic sustaining this paradox is characterised as sensory-practical rationality: risk is perceived, graded, and managed according to sensory detectability rather than toxicological magnitude, producing a stable pattern of conditional risk acceptance. Sensory cues structure how exposure routes are represented (visible oral and inhalation risk versus the invisible dermal hazard), anchor the hierarchy of health effects (from immediately witnessed poisoning to intergenerational malformation and cancer), and constrain the salience of environmental harm to what can be materially apprehended. This representational architecture is not a product of ignorance or cognitive error, but rather a culturally embedded and structurally reproduced form of lay expertise shaped by precarious labour conditions, limited regulatory enforcement, and export-market compliance pressures. The findings carry implications for how occupational health interventions are designed and how risk communication can engage invisible cumulative hazards beyond the limits of sensory-practical knowledge.

Read their article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119561

Abstract: Local communities are widely blamed for the increasing deforestation in Malawi, primarily due to agricultural expansion and the increased use of biomass energy. Yet, there is limited evidence to understand systemic trade-offs that communities face in their land-use decisions. This study examines the drivers of deforestation in Southern Malawi, focusing on community perceptions and the resource Nexus outcomes related to deforestation. We conducted 25 focus group discussions, 22 key informant interviews, and 271 household interviews across Chikwawa, Blantyre, Mwanza, Mulanje, and Thyolo districts. We also conducted seven expert interviews, facilitated five participatory workshops, and employed ethnographic techniques to gather the lived experiences of community members. The study reveals that (1) socio-economic needs for food, energy and income create a vicious cycle of cropland expansion at the direct expense of forest conservation. (2) Community perceptions identify biomass energy production (index=0.0788) as the main driver of deforestation, followed by cropland expansion (0.0769) and energy poverty (0.0746). (3) The dominance of negative ecological outcomes, followed by economic and political outcomes. The socio-cultural dimension reports the least negative outcomes. Nonetheless, positive outcomes are highest in the socio-cultural dimension, followed by the economic and political dimensions. The least positive outcomes are reported in the ecological dimension. The study empirically shows how community perceptions reshape the Resource Nexus and offers geographically specific policy recommendations. It treats deforestation as both socioeconomic and ecological problem, calling for integrated policies that address livelihood needs and structural drivers in Southern Malawi and similar areas in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2026.108206

Zeynep Ceren Eren Benlisoy (CASAS’ member) has reviewed this book authored by Deniz Pelek (also a CASAS’ member) in The Journal of Agrarian Change.

Zeynep wrote in her review: “Rural Turkey has long been grappling with multiple crises. Neoliberal restructuring, forced displacement, conflict and war have resulted in the mass migration and dispossession of groups within the country and across borders. The entry of highly vulnerable groups into rural labour markets has been facilitated by domestic and foreign policy interventions characterised by authoritarian and expansionist ambitions of the Turkish government. As a result, rural Turkey, already characterised by immense ethno-religious diversity and socio-economic inequalities, has been further devastated by these migrations and mobilisations. In this context, I consider Pelek’s work to be a valuable and timely contribution to Critical Agrarian Studies and Migration Studies. The book skillfully brings together significant themes such as labour, ethnicity, migration, mobility and space in rural areas. And it also invites us to rethink on the conventional conceptualization of the “seasonal” agricultural labourers by considering the deseasonal and perpetual character it has taken today in rural Turkey.”

Read her review here: https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.70105

The book is available here: https://akmb.gov.tr/e-yayinlar/migrant-workers-in-turkish-agriculture-patterns-of-mobility-and-dispossession-1990-2018/

Kapil Yadav (CASAS’ member) has published this article in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Abstract: This study examines forest fires in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand by shifting attention from ignitions to the historical production of flammable landscapes. It situates contemporary fire regimes within longer histories of landscape transformation and everyday forest use. Drawing on archival research and ethnographic field work, this study employs the plantation–plot binary to examine how state-led plantation forestry and community practices have materially shaped forest vegetation, fuel loads, and fire regimes. Plantation forestry expanded pine dominance and institutionalized fire suppression, producing landscapes with fuel continuity and high flammability that persist long after timber extraction ended. At the same time, everyday practices of rural communities in collecting grass, leaf litter, and fuel wood, conceptualized as plot making, have reduced understory biomass and kept fire intensity low. Plantation and plot are more than competing perspectives; they are two distinct ways of materially making forests that overlap and intersect in the study region. Their interaction helps explain why fires in the region are widespread yet typically remain low-intensity surface fires. By highlighting the role of plantation logics in shaping fire regimes, the article brings plantation studies into dialogue with political ecology and critical human geography of fire. It concludes by arguing that sustainable fire futures depend not only on climate change mitigation but also on how land is used and governed, including the recognition of community forest dependence as a key strategy for reducing fire risk.

Read his article here: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2026.2688348

CASAS’ member Usman Ashraf has published this article in The Extractive Industries and Society journal.

Abstract: This research demonstrates that co-option and resistance in extractive sectors are not mutually exclusive, but rather, they are co-produced and coexist as messy entanglements. The type of resistance analyzed here did not seek a mine closure but was instead about (re)negotiating the terms of insertion into the mining enterprise. In such resistance efforts, the on-the-ground realities do not neatly fit into normative conceptualizations of co-option and resistance. Local people tactically switch between co-option and resistance to achieve their objectives, which involve a complex calculus of self-interest, social obligations, (re)negotiations, livelihood improvements, and altruistic acts for the greater good. The key aspect of such resistance is that it uses low-intensity, everyday forms of resistance in which the tactical use of escalation, framing of claims as human rights, and litigation play an important role. My argument is based on qualitative research carried out in the coal mining areas of Tharparkar under Belt and Road Initiative in Pakistan, in 2022 and 2024. The study concludes that a nuanced analysis of different types of mobilizations and their objectives is necessary to differentiate between the workings of different types of resistance

Read his paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2026.101966

Abstract; Thirty-eight years after the signing of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the quest to democratize land politics in the Philippine countryside remains fraught with persistent and developing challenges. This paper draws on participatory action research with Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan (KATARUNGAN), a national movement of peasants, farmworkers, fisher peoples, Indigenous Peoples, and other rural working peoples, to identify four challenges shaping rural-agrarian struggles in the Philippines today: 1. Reform reversals and land reconcentration; 2. Contestations over conflicting land laws and overlapping claims; 3. Escalating capitalist land grabs and violence; and 4. Worsening scissors crisis and loss of agrarian livelihoods. The movement’s experience reveals that CARP’s focus on land redistribution, while securing significant gains during periods of strong peasant mobilization and coalition-building with state reformers in the 1990s, has been undermined by neoliberal agricultural policies and aggressive reversals of land reform. These developments emphasize the limits of redistribution alone, especially without sustained state support for beneficiaries’ economic viability and ecological regeneration. The paper argues that agrarian reform must transcend the traditional paradigm by grounding it in the holistic framework of the 4Rs: Redistribution, Recognition, Restitution, and Regulation.

Read their full paper here: https://cids.up.edu.ph/discussion_paper/where-are-we-now-state-agrarian-reform-rural-agrarian-struggles-philippines-perspective-contemporary-agrarian-movement