Climate Justice, the Global South, and Policy Preferences of Kenyan Environmental NGOs

Negotiations for a global agreement to address climate change have often pitted the nations of the heavily industrialized Global North against the nations of the developing Global South. The Global North has tended to emphasize the common responsibilities of all nations to reduce emissions while nations of the Global South have tended to place more emphasis on differentiated responsibilities. The Global North-South negotiating positions are derived from inequality in the historical and current emissions of greenhouse gasses, the emerging consequences of climate change, and the geopolitical negotiating power between nation-states. However, these broad sweeping categories miss diverse goals and policy preferences among civil society actors within nations. Through in-depth, in-person interviews, this research documents the surprisingly strong presence of Global North policy preferences among the field of Kenyan environmental NGOs—a field that is significantly divided among the “climate justice” policy priorities strongly associated with nations of the Global South and “emissions reductions for all” priorities associated with nations in the Global North. Qualitative data captures the rationale of KENGOs for the respective policy script preferences. Utilizing the nation-state as a unit of analysis would miss this variation among civil society actors within the Global South, variation that demonstrates the complex interaction between the diffusion of global policies and domestic social contexts.