This week sees the start of this year’s United Nations’ Conference of Parties meeting (COP 28) hosted in the United Arab Emirates, where world leaders will assemble to discuss global responses to climate change. In conjunction with the start of the conference, a new collection of original research is being released on Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies, with contributions from climate researchers at the University of Sussex.

The collection foregrounds questions of justice and explores the relationship between capitalism, climate change and rural development. Across 26 chapters, originally published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, the book provides a broad range of case studies highlighting the emerging dynamics around green transitions, carbon neutrality and agricultural change.

The collection explores the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas to highlight how different people are affected by climate change in relation to class , gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation. It explores how climate change, and the responses to it, affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics.

Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies includes chapters on lithium mining in Chile by Dr Daniela Soto Hernandez (International Development and International Relations) and Professor Peter Newell (International Relations) and so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ in Peru by Dr Will Lock (International Development and Anthropology). Both chapters examine proposed strategies for addressing climate change and what this means for social and agrarian struggles across the world.

Commenting on the publication of the collection, Professor Peter Newell notes: “This new collection highlights the range of responses to climate change and how they are shaping mitigation and adaptation efforts around the world, with drastic implications for agrarian communities. It offers an essential counter-balance to top-down discussions at COP and a variety of alternative pathways out of the crisis”. Dr Daniela Soto Hernandez, whose chapter analyses the new waves of extractivism being driven by the demand for ‘green’ minerals adds: “Now is the perfect time to address not just questions of global climate goals and targets, but the changes that are happening now due to climate debates and to give voice to the most affected populations that have contributed the least to the crises we are facing.”

The collection is open access and can be read here.

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