Stories from the Global South: the interplay of climate science, ‘action’ and the implications for development

ABSTRACT

Calls for humanity to act on environmental changes are becoming increasingly critical. The growing polycrisis including the impact of ongoing conflicts in contested geopolitical spaces and the struggles for ways to sustain a livelihood in areas of precarity and poverty, are just some of the intersecting challenges which have given rise to a Code Red alarm by the United Nations surrounding issues related to climate change. Rich narratives and stories of climate actions from Africa offer examples of potential paths. This paper explores how such narratives inform local development and climate action. A key message is that stories and narratives, created by various peoples, disciplines, and systems of knowledge, can all be powerful genres and sources for agentic change that can inspire and embolden development practice and action.

KEYWORDS:

• Polycrisis
• science action
• climate stressors
• engaged actors
• African cities

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Q54
• Q56
• D83

Introduction – reasons and matters for concern

The Anthropocene is a time in which human activity began having a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems and is beset and shaped by various global and local environmental changes (Steffen et al., 2007). The challenges we face (e.g. poverty, wars, health, climate change, migration, unsustainable and sustainable development) have the potential to overwhelm the forces of nature. However, the Anthropocene also holds the ‘seeds’ of opportunity for fair and equitable growth, for a ‘good Anthropocene’ (Hamann et al., 2020; O’Brien, 2021a).

Development challenges in many parts of the world, not least of all Africa, can provide solutions or setbacks for actions designed to improve the well-being of people and the planet. Those of us living in Africa, and in South Africa in particular, are challenged by polycrisis. These include political in-fighting, corruption and failures in the delivery of basic livelihood essentials and services related to clean and accessible water, affordable and sustainable electricity, efficient and credible schooling and basic education, employment creation, and places of safety, well-being and good care, among other needs and stresses. Power plants are struggling to provide electricity for the country. The lack of electrical pumping power now also impacts the pumping of water in various reservoirs and water purification systems. Ongoing heatwaves, and the practice of homeless people directing traffic when the traffic lights fail during electricity load shedding, are now part of the ‘new normal’ in many parts of South Africa, particularly in Johannesburg.

Rather than descending into depression and arm-waving despair about what to do, it is possible to continue finding ways to enhance personal and local agency, by focussing attention not only on matters of fact but also on matters of concern (Latour, 2004), particularly among those who are young, have the energy to press on and are already concerned and engaging in global environmental change issues:

It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Would it not be rather terrible if...we were still training young kids - yes, young recruits, young cadets - for wars that are no longer possible, fighting enemies long gone … leaving them ill-equipped in the face of threats we had not anticipated, for which we are so thoroughly unprepared. (Latour, 2004, p. 225)

The development concerns we face in cities in the Global South, for which we need to be prepared, are also very closely coupled to and interlinked with climate stressors. In the paper, using cities as our sites of interest and potential action, we address two dimensions: a) the specificity of experience of climate change for the Global South and how this is constantly surfacing and unveiling development challenges, and, b) the implications for how development is studied and practiced and the way this can be enhanced so that personal and collective agency may be harnessed for effective and sustainable change.

Scope and intent of the paper

The various challenges facing humanity and the planet are complex and interconnected and can no longer be tackled in silos. These include: silos coupled to government and governance architectures (e.g. departments of agriculture; water, housing and education etc.); silos of action and learning (e.g. siloed tertiary, secondary and primary education systems) and, more critically, silos created out of ignorance, by partitioning and prefacing only certain knowledge(s) in debates and planning (e.g. formal ‘science’ vs local, tacit, indigenous and practitioner knowledge). A key ‘narrative thread’ we trace is that for development to be sustainable and effective, we need to rethink and explore how education (both formal and informal) can be harnessed and designed to enhance agentic actions:

One important source of agency is learning from the actions of others… Applied at scale this, [examples of stories and narrative] can shift the conceptualization of climate change from ‘issue-based’ to ‘action-based’ … [incorporating] all relevant practices people engage in as members of a community, as professionals and as citizens. (De Meyer et al., 2021, p. 19, italics added)

The stories and narratives chosen form part of our methods in this paper, where we argue for extending the methodological range of development studies and for focussing on some relevant narratives that underscore the importance of the inclusion of different voices, explanations and identifications of complex challenges as they play out at the local level. To this end, some of the discourses used in the current, global and local environmental debates are threaded through an exploration of some of the narratives and stories being told. How people frame, think about and then choose to act or remove themselves from the story are becoming increasingly important ‘spaces’ and ‘processes’ to better understand. Experiences and narratives being used to engage with ‘Climate change’ (CC), including the multi-stressor backdrop to CC and narratives from a ‘southern gaze’, are therefore also interrogated.

Another rationale for the paper is to highlight the urgent need for greater collaboration between ways of examining, framing, and thinking about problems both in formal education spaces (inter-intra- and transdisciplinary science) (Amey & Brown, 2004; Hoque & Baer, 2014), and also to explore the so-called, non-formal educational spaces where knowledge is created by local people (tacit and local knowledge creation and ‘traditional knowledge’) (Fornssler et al., 2014; Tengö et al., 2014, 2017). A critical element will be to examine how such knowledge also ‘travels’ or is impeded from ‘travelling’ into various policy and practice ‘rooms’ and spaces (Nowotny, 2007; Sarewitz & Pielke, 2007). Finally, we argue that examining additional narratives may help in opening the often sclerotic and suffocating grip of the polycrisis and education options, and open up more exciting visions for hope, thereby inspiring:

… the freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine … It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automations, the result will not be the love of life, but love of death. (Fromm, 1966 as cited in Freire, 1993, p. 42, emphasis added)

Background to the climate change and development polycrisis in Africa

Africa is chosen in this paper as the focal continent because it has been shown to be vulnerable to climate risks as well as struggling with various development challenges that have their roots in colonialism, as well as governance and capacity constraints (IPCC, 2022a, 2022b).

The African continent, while rich in capabilities, innovative ideas, various natural resources, peoples, traditions and cultures, is also at risk of periods of pronounced drought, dryness, and degradation of ecosystems, alongside increasing levels of precarity and erosion of livelihoods and ‘institutions’ due to a number of stresses, not least climate stress. Several reports have repeatedly shown that Africa is vulnerable to climate stresses, such as those from various Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, including the most recent Sixth Assessment, IPCC report on physical climate science, and the Working group dealing with adaptation (IPCC, 2022a, 2022b). The rate of warming in recent decades is about twice the global average, with projections of further warming for the subcontinent making the southern African region a notable climate change hotspot. Heat waves, which may increase as the world warms, may together with multi-year droughts, aggravate agricultural potential livelihoods derived from land-based, local economies. Under constrained adaptation options, the ability to ensure current and future sustainability and the health and well-being of human and natural environments becomes even more constrained (Engelbrecht & Monteiro, 2021).

The story line for the African, and in particular the southern African region, thus appears to be dire (Scholes et al., 2023), (Table 1), particularly if we do not ratchet up fair and just mitigation and adaptation options.

Table 1. Projected climate for the southern African region (adapted from Engelbrecht & Monteiro, 2021; IPCC, 2022a; Ripple et al., 2023; Scholes et al., 2023).

Southern Africa is warming – over the interior the rate of warming is twice the global average. The region is likely to become generally drier. Rainfall futures over the eastern escarpment are uncertain. The ENSO cycle impacts (e.g. El Niño – La Niña cycle) are projected to intensify. Longer lasting droughts co-occrring with intense heat wave.s Over eastern Southern Africa, the number of extreme rainfall events are projected to increase in their frequency of occurrence.

Deciding how to build adaptive capacity and enhance robust responses to the challenges that are currently at play in the climate change arena, and deciding who should be engaged to do something, are all critical challenges. The state cannot do this alone, particularly, some may argue, where there are problems of corruption, mismanagement and misappropriation of resources. Space does not permit a full interrogation of how and why African institutions can still enhance climate actions. Suffice it to note that the intentionality of the role and architecture of institutions have a bearing here in relation to Douglas’s (1986) key work on how institutions of all types work. This is worth remembering, not least for the caution that:

Any institution that is going to keep its shape needs to gain legitimacy by distinctive grounding in nature and in reason: then it affords to its members a set of analogies with which to explore the world …

Any institution then starts to control the memory if its members; it causes them to forget experiences incompatible with its righteous image … .it provides the categories of their thought, sets the terms for self-knowledge, fixes identities. All of this is not enough. It must secure the social edifice by sacralizing the principles of justice . (Douglas, 1986, p. 112, italics added)

Methods and approaches for enhancing development action

The stresses of both climate change and other intersectional drivers of change (e.g. weak, constrained and compromised governance and government) can be shaped in positive ways by local agentic behaviours. Narratives and stories, as used in this paper, have ways of connecting policy, plans and practices into real world contexts (O’Brien, 2015, 2021b; O’Brien et al., 2023):

Stories play an important part in transforming social, political, economic, ecological, and intellectual worlds, both through their descriptive and normative elements, and through the metaphors and meanings that are communicated. (O’Brien, 2021b, p. 73)

Narratives and stories being produced and designed by a range of actors, in local contexts, can enhance robust development options, enhance institutional coherence, expand and deepen urban knowledge systems and can help to galvanise agency (both personal and collective), in local, urban contexts (Borie et al., 2019). Such narratives can become powerful organisers and sites for action particularly where the capacities of state government are either strained or increasingly seen as non-existent. Narratives and their utilisation (Borie et al., 2019; Brandi et al., 2019; Moezzi et al., 2017) thus become sources of engagement for people, networks and institutions, providing a coherence and ‘glue’ that brings actors together for potential action. Through the use of narratives and stories the ability to stimulate practical potentials and performativity can be increased (Borie et al., 2019). Stories and narratives become therefore not merely ‘flat discourses but can become embedded in practice and policy actions’ (Borie et al., 2019, p. 205).

Several examples of how stories and narratives (the opportunities and challenges and their potential use in the wider climate change domain) include those dealing with energy utilisation (Moezzi et al., 2017); those dealing with climate change governance in African cities, e.g. in the cases of Cape Town and Nairobi (Borie et al., 2019), and wider discussions of uniting various disciplines (including the neurosciences, narratology, psychology and climate change communications) (Brandi et al., 2019). In most cases when such approaches are being used, the issues of how and which stories are chosen, whose knowledge is ultimately prefaced and enabled to travel into policy and practice, and what this may mean for science and development are not always simple obstacles to overcome – rather, they can become vexing additional concerns that require careful navigation.

Whose stories and narratives count?

Many of the meta-stories and those pertaining to the climate change and development discourses, either internationally and/or locally, focus on two main areas of activity, namely mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation relates mostly to greenhouse gas emissions from both energy production and land use. Adaptation refers to those elements related to reducing the risks and vulnerabilities associated with global warming and covers a wide spectrum of action including building local, national and international capacity of various sectors, agents, and people to cope with climate impacts (Feola, 2015; IPCC, 2022a, 2022b).

More recent attention is also increasingly shifting to issues of how transformative adaptation actions can be used to build robust human and environmental sustainability. Many views on adaptation, and in particular transformative adaptation, abound (Pelling et al., 2014). The grand, meta-narratives and stories, for example, have both a focus on incremental adaptation and transformational adaptation, with both perspectives holding potential for framing a range of policy and implementation options. Transformational adaptation usually includes responses to non-linear changes and includes ‘radical shifts’ in cultural and institutional responses, various risk and technical management approaches (Pelling et al., 2014). Transformation also usually includes ‘ … . an observed rebalancing of rights and responsibilities between actors; the citizenry and state in classical formulation’ (Pelling et al., 2014, p. 2).

But how does one approach the act of rebalancing, and actualise more just, inclusive and sustainable environments? Various pathways and roadmaps, including those in complex, urban settings, have been outlined in the literature (Flottum & Gjerstad, 2017; Pereira et al., 2021; Shi et al., 2016).

Before one can move into a narrative and action, however, the ‘framing’ of the story is, usually required (Janetos et al., 2012; Wright et al., 2012), and includes not only the collective framing of issues and concerns but also the role and influence of more personal influences on framing (O’Brien, 2021b; Wright et al., 2012). The source of the framing is also important to understand as this ultimately informs any action, whether activism and/or policy, science and practice engagements. Key questions such as will the framing be drawn from a ‘scientific uncertainty frame; a national security frame; a polar bear frame; a money frame; a catastrophe frame and/or a justice and equity frame’? (Shanahan, 2007 as cited in Flottum & Gjerstad, 2017, p. 2). These also become important considerations because most frames bring or reveal competing coalitions, sites of contestation and power allegiances (Nowotny, 2007). In turn these often expose more visible ‘policy narratives in the policy system’ with others being moved into the shadows or background (Flottum & Gjerstad, 2017, p. 12).

Co-creating a city narrative

One arena where the adaptation discourse (both incremental and more transformative) has been finding influence and traction is in urban city spaces (Roberts, 2008; Romero-Lankao et al., 2018). Urban spaces and cities often bring together both climate-driven hazards and stressors (e.g. floods and heat waves) and development challenges that unveil persistent development deficiencies in the ‘system’, including weak and poor settlement infrastructures, inappropriate planning in at-risk places and zones, and weak governance, response planning and actions (IPCC, 2022b; Roberts, 2008; Romero-Lankao et al., 2018).

In response to such interconnecting challenges, several programmes and actions have been stimulated. South African cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change for several reasons. Firstly, they comprise rapidly growing populations that strain water, energy supply and other resources. Secondly, their high densities, impermeable surfaces, and often poor urban planning, aggravate flood risk. Thirdly, their high densities, high energy consumption, when combined with climate phenomena, contribute to worsening the impact of heatwaves. Lastly, climate risk is accentuated by high levels of social vulnerability associated with informal settlements (e.g. Roberts, 2008).

Led by several thought leaders who have helped to ‘frame’ local climate adaption city narratives over time (e.g. Bulkeley & Betsill, 2003; Carmin et al., 2012; Roberts, 2008; Satterthwaite et al., 2020 amongst many others) have all enabled scientific research theory and practice in cities to travel into various local government policy spaces. One useful overview of how these urban narratives influence the policy and practice space is provided by Shi et al. (2016) who, in addition to a host of other actions, call for ‘broadening participation in adaptation planning across municipal and civil society actors’ (Shi et al., 2016, p. 131).

Recent initiatives and examples can also be found in global networks such as the work of the C40 Cities (2022a, 2022b). The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Durban Adaptation Charter, amongst others, have begun creating and fostering new opportunities for more engaged urban narratives, stories and frames for climate change actions in cities (IPCC, 2022b; Lee & Van de Meene, 2012). These networked organizational actions have also been strongly supported by incisive and rigorous studies from local academics (increasingly what may be termed pracademics), consultants and other citizen efforts which have illuminated the challenges and opportunities when working in such lively and co-engaged spaces (Pasquini et al., 2015, Roberts, 2008, Roberts & O’Donoghue, 2013, Satterthwaite et al., 2020).

While implementation of effective climate change adaptation has been slow, there are a number of other projects and policy interventions that have also been implemented successfully. A number of climate action plans have been developed, by different actors and agents (e.g. youth, academia, citizens etc.). In the South African context, as part of their climate action plans (or similar), the cities of Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, have all developed Climate Change Vulnerability and Risk Assessments (City of Cape Town, 2021, City of Johannesburg, 2021, City of Tshwane, 2021, eThekwini Municiapality, 2019, Nelson Mandela Bay, 2015). They have each risen to the unique challenges of climate change and development which the large cities in the country face (Naidoo, 2024).

Links between development and climate change actions, however, are not often easy to untangle from ‘business as usual efforts’ in cities. Usually those engaging in climate change action, if at all, are officials linked to environmental departments with very little interaction with sectors that should be engaging more actively, e.g. planners, infrastructural engineers, urban designers, water technocrats and policy makers, disaster risk reduction and emergency responders etc. More fundamentally, the local and tacit knowledge of citizens is also very seldom considered as ‘valuable’ for addressing climate change challenges. This type of knowledge is rather framed in terms of technocratic and scientific issues, created by researchers, academics and increasingly consultants. Individuals, local environmental champions, communities, NGOs and citizens can all help to widen the range of climate activities and actions informed by and with the communities who usually have first-hand experience. The failure to recognise this knowledge value has led to calls for more active citizen engagement that can catalyse (Flottum & Gjerstad, 2017; Shi et al., 2016) agency and change.

Notwithstanding these obstacles, examples of stories of good engagement between city officials and development can be found. Development initiatives informing and being coupled to climate change efforts include those actions linked to public transportation, energy poverty, housing design, enhanced ecological services and biodiversity actions. Sustainable waste management is an instance of how cities are trying to bolster their climate change mitigation actions. Johannesburg and eThekwini Municipality, for example, are implementing landfill methane gas capture projects. The eco-design and architecture of homes and housing units are also growing. Johannesburg, for example, has undertaken solar water geyser programmes, and the Cape Town has retrofitted ceilings in low-income communities to improve the energy efficiency and thermal comfort of the homes (City of Cape Town, 2021, City of Johannesburg, 2021, City of Tshwane, 2021, eThekwini Municiapality, 2019, Nelson Mandela Bay, 2015). The cities of Ekurhuleni and Cape Town have also initiated procurement processes to secure renewable energy for their cities (Nyathi, 2022).

Cities are also playing a notable role in biodiversity and ecological systems. The Muncipality of eThekwini, for example, has rehabilitated 7400 kilometres of riverine habitat through its Transformative River Management Programme (TRMP) to improve water quality and reduce flood risks. Tshwane (Pretoria) is also investing in rehabilitating their river systems (e.g. the Hennops River) to support flood attenuation efforts (Singh, 2020). Tshwane is also supporting small-scale farmers in an effort to create green jobs and bolster food security (C40 Cities, 2016).

The practical implementation of climate actions linked to development in smaller municipalities is, however, lagging and is not as well profiled. An investigation into eight smaller municipalities in the Western Cape found that this is due to a range of barriers. There is a lack of understanding of adaptation to climate change options, party politics is hindering decision-making and, there is a lack of public awareness of climate change (Pasquini et al., 2013). Climate priorities are also not yet reflected in budgeting processes. A review of six District Municipalities in the Eastern Cape, for example, found that the overt links to the climate change context were not clear and were inadequately covered in half of the budgetary plans reviewed (Santhia et al., 2018).

Leadership is also emerging as a key theme to help narratives, stories and discourses be transformed into actions on the ‘ground’. In a comparative study of Cape Town, Durban and Threewaterskloof, Durban’s success in coupling development and climate change risk planning, was attributed to a key technical climate change champion who won the trust and support of the Municipal Manager and Mayor. In the case of Cape Town, strong leadership was also a critical factor. In the absence of political leadership, senior officials from the Environmental Resource Management Department, in collaboration with experts from the University of Cape Town, helped to bridge the gap. Theewaterskloof did not have a dedicated climate change team, nor a dedicated climate plan but was still able to pioneer adaptation initiatives through a multistakeholder body comprising fifteen well-capacitated local business leaders, municipal officials and politicians (Taylor et al., 2014).

Engaging with city officials and examining how they help steer stories and policy narratives into development actions are important but are arguably only one set of the actors in the wider ‘story’ of climate change and development. Citizens, ‘you and me’, can also help and indeed are leading climate change actions and development in various cities (Vogel & Ziervogel, 2021). Exciting efforts in city engagements have thus also been framed by adopting more transdisciplinary (TD) approaches that move beyond only a dialogue usually framed as public engagement and a series of ‘living labs’, with scientists talking to and with city officials, to the sites of co-engaged story and narrative creation in relation to climate change and development informed by and with the public.

Much has been written about how TD approaches can include more reflexive and deeper engagements in development and climate change contexts (e.g. IPCC, 2022b, Moser, 2016, Moser et al., 2019). Researchers in science and technology (e.g. Jasanoff, 2003, 2004, Klenk & Meehan, 2015, Scoones et al., 2020), and in the humanities (e.g. Mitchell et al., 2014, Vogel et al., 2021a, McClure, 2023) have enriched current climate change and development narratives of cities by aiming to work with practitioners and policy makers.

In the case of Johannesburg, for example, various opportunities and a range of sustainable engagements anchored in years of trust building between researchers, ‘pracademics’, city officials and citizens, have been and continue to be built on (Vogel & Ziervogel, 2021). In the case of Cape Town, the role of embedded researchers has also helped to frame and carry the narratives into various development spaces.

An exploration into the decision-making processes that informed climate change responses in the Cape Town, for example, using the co-designed sharing of narratives and approaches, has been investigated by Taylor (2017). Taylor was a researcher working within the city’s council offices, and was thus able to observe daily metropolitan story telling and narrative creations. From her engagements she found that the dominant theories used to conceptualise climate adaptation can act as a pathway or a cycle, but that they either ignore or do not fully account for all perspectives. Taylor explains that they ‘inadequately represent the contested and contingent nature of decision making that prevail within the governance systems of cities such as Cape Town’ (Taylor, 2017, p. 3). She argues further that the siloed nature of Global North and South climate change and city development narratives, the divides and differences in capacity, as well as the financial means for change, all hinder rather than propel actions for development and climate change actions.

In the case of Johannesburg, researchers engaging with the city to craft the Climate Adaptation Plan (Vogel et al., 2021a) also raised a number of critical institutional challenges faced by the city, including difficulties in integrating adaptation and mitigation planning, sectoral mainstreaming being undermined by complex governance and power relations (Vogel et al., 2021a), and problems with employment practices and behaviours (e.g. key performance appraisals) that run counter to the need for cross-sectoral strategy and city planning. These barriers further entrench and promote siloed planning and implementation of climate change and development policy.

The dependency on donor funds and well-meaning consultants called in to develop climate plans without building local capacity in cities, further alienates city officials from action, turning many efforts into mere ‘tick box’ exercises as officials get drawn into moving onto to the next ‘story’ and the next pressing challenge (e.g. Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, Nationally Determined Contributions required for COPs etc). The performance management system and the narrative it creates in cities, with complex tendering processes, further disincentivises the much needed, transversal actions required for complex, interconnected challenges, this despite there being an acknowledgement of the importance of climate action in the central narrative in cities, namely the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) (Vogel & Ziervogel, 2021, Naidoo, 2024).

The explanatory power of narratives and stories of development when applied to the field of climate change policy and implementation, can and should in many cases be reframed so that they can assist in mainstreaming and overcoming situations where ‘progress in adapting cities to a changing climate is currently constrained by both the problems and potential solutions of interventions being too technical for most politicians to deal with and prioritise and too political for most technical and administrative officials to design and implement’ (Taylor, 2017, p. 3).

The Johannesburg and Cape Town experiences, briefly described above, when planned and orchestrated, can also travel and entrench the idea that adaptation planning and implementation for climate change is an iterative journey, and can also be further developed to provide the ‘seeds’ for deeper and wider transformation (O’Brien, 2021b).

Institutionalising climate change within a city requires linking the political, technical and administrative functions of a city government. This must be done regularly and repetitively to be effective, and it ‘requires structures, processes and individuals equipped and empowered to do so. Yet, very few structures, processes and individuals exist’ (Taylor, 2017, p. 260). Such gaps need urgent attention: requiring city planners, amongst others, to assist in plans and policy for climate change and development action. In such spaces, the role of various stories and approaches can be used creatively to foster appreciation of various knowledge(s), trainings and backgrounds. Here the roles of universities, technikons and educational institutions (formal and informal) need attention.

The future training and education of engineers, city planners, water technocrats amongst a host of other actors, also needs to be reviewed, challenged, upgraded and recreated with a view for effective longer-term climate change and development actions. Centres of education, including universities, technikons and NGOs engaged in education, all need to assist in writing the ‘story lines’ of the curriculum together with local citizens and actors. Academics and curriculum planners need to be able to draw on rich stories and approaches that will educate and equip people to face the changes we are already facing, as well as those challenges to come (Latour, 2004). Increasing the narratives drawn from citizens (e.g. through citizen science) and youth groups can also help co-create stories to share, find roots and become catalysts of change (Vogel et al., 2021b and 2022).

Engaging in creative visioning with inspiring, younger (McClure, 2023; Sakshi et al., 2020) and older citizens, and other actors, can be fuel for igniting action in the polycrisis of our time, in different spaces across the African continent. Futures narratives and storytelling are also now increasingly being used as approaches to help craft new sustainability and adaptation visions and pathways for consideration (Pereira et al., 2021; Sakshi et al., 2020). The engagement of artists, who communicate but also think more deliberatively about dimensions of the polycrisis, are also opening up exciting avenues for more agentic engagements (Warrington-Coetzee, 2022).

Despite the challenges of the co-generated narrative creation between city bureaucrats and others in some of the small vignettes provided in this paper, the journey between academia, youth groups and citizens continues, and must be expanded upon. In February, 2024, for example, Johannesburg, together with a number of partners (including academics, businesses, local youth etc.), hosted a City of Joburg Green Jobs for Youth Expo. The exhibition provided a number of different policy and practice ‘rooms’ (Nowotny, 2007) and spaces to hopefully cement, but also kick start, new engagements and opportunities, not only for youth job creation and skill training but also for fostering wider engagements to help navigate around critical challenges the city is facing.

African narratives and urban narratives

The interplay of climate science ‘action’ and implications for development using selected narratives and framings from the Global South have been presented. The stories and tales have been drawn from and informed by international as well as very local framings, narratives and practice, particularly those experiences from cities in Africa, most notably in South Africa. The story lines and framings drawn on can help us all navigate the complex, messy worlds in which we find ourselves on a daily basis.

The lessons that are emerging from these case examples is that relationships, humility and trust building all matter. As the demand for more technocratic solutions, improved science and artificial intelligence build, so does the need to pay attention to the demand for certain intangibles which are difficult to demonstrate through formal academic or policy ‘impact factors’, and the various metrics of commodified success stories. The calls for a persistent mantra of evidence-based and informed actions can and must also be informed by the ‘softer’, often more nuanced narratives and stories that we tell ourselves and others (Vogel & O’Brien, 2021).

‘There are rules stipulating what counts as evidence’ (Nowotny, 2007, p. 481). Nowotny (2007, p. 481) argues that evidence-based policy processes are based on a form of storytelling and framing but one that is skewed towards:

Mainly it is what can be counted, and, therefore, what can be measured and managed. In throwing its evidence-based net as widely as possible, this kind of policy insists that everything can be compared … Standardization is a practice which strips away, local contingences and peculiarities’. towards so-called objectivity. (Nowotny, 2007, p. 481)

Nowotny (2007) carefully cautions against being beguiled into the world of quick wins, charging into policy rooms with missionary zeal, and filling spaces without doing the careful, honest brokering and self and personal reflexivity that this all takes to be effective (Barad, 2007, O’Brien, 2021b). The entangled spaces and engagements are often the ones that provide and reveal the contradictions that are being made invisible by various contestations of power, distrust and alienation. As O’Brien comments on Barad’s concept of entanglement, ‘ … practices establish the boundaries, properties, and meanings of the world; structures materialize through our intra-actions within one large, entangled system’ (2021, p. 46).

Notwithstanding the need for excellence in the scientific and more positivist observations, methods and approaches that can help us navigate our complex world, there is also a need for greater humility and serious reflexion, transparent and inclusive engagement that is required where the ontological and epistemological stories, evidence, traditions, and cultures are truly valued, and not merely sucked into the cog-making machine of so-called sustainability and dressed up in the cloak of transdisciplinarity. Contestation, contradiction and tension prevail when one tries to cross boundaries either in the academic space or in the world of trauma and conflict (Hubl, 2020). It is in these contradictions and contestations, contained in the seeds of the Anthropocene era and the polycrisis, that much work awaits to be undertaken. In this context, there is an important role for ‘knowledge ambassadors’– community members who are able to integrate Western or mainstream knowledge and ways of knowing with indigenous knowledge and local ways of knowing. We borrow the term ‘knowledge ambassadors’ as opposed to ‘knowledge brokers’ to emphasise the duality of exchange. The term knowledge ambassadors also underscores indigenous narratives that argue knowledge is to be shared, not owned (Fornssler et al., 2014).

Code Red for humanity and the earth is real. The systems we know are changing. Finding ways to deeply engage and entangle ourselves with various perspectives and views and then co-distil from these shared stories and narratives what can be used, both now and in the future, are essential. The world is not only here for the present generation, but as described by Fromm (1966), cited in Freire (1970), is being shaped, created and crafted with exhilarating potential by a number of actors and will continue to be collectively and personally made by those who follow. Barad tell us that:

The world and its possibilities for becoming are re-made with each moment. If we hold on to the belief that the world is made of individual entities, it is hard to see how even our best, most well-intentioned calculations for right action can avoid tearing holes in the delicate tissue structure of entanglements that the lifeblood of the world runs through. Intra-acting responsibly as part of the world means taking account of the entangled phenomena that are intrinsic to the world’s vitality and being responsive to the possibilities that might help us and it flourish. Meeting each moment, being alive to the possibilities of becoming, is an ethical call, an invitation that is written into the very matter of all being and becoming. We need to meet the universe halfway, to take responsibility for the role that we play in the world’s differential becoming. (Barad, 2007, p. 396)

Conclusion

The challenges facing humanity and the planet are complex and intersecting and impact the lives of each and every one of us in various ways. Despite the well-meaning and well-intentioned global forums (e.g. Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP), Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) forums etc.) and various local initiatives, the need for an urgent rethink of how and what we do as a people and the environment interacting together on this planet, across scales and contexts, remain clear. Science alone will not be enough to get us through. Rather, as we have shown in this paper, we need to rethink and recalibrate our stories and narratives together. Those in academia, who are privileged to be in these spaces, need to continue in academic and science pursuits but those, who venture out and go beyond the walls of academia, we would argue need to do so with more urgency, more humility and with greater vigour.

There are a number of constellations and actors who are being engaged with scientists, academics, practitioners and creatives. These actors are beginning to penetrate and work with policy makers and practitioners in various forums. City officials, practitioners, scientists and the ‘public’ (old and young) are all coming together to co-create narratives of change. In many cases these are located in real places and activities that hold the ‘seeds’ for growing positive environments for both the planet and peoples.

The stories and narratives we tell ourselves, as we try and live through our daily lives in a complex world and those we dare to create, risk and envision, all matter. We, the authors of this paper and living in Johannesburg and Cape Town, believe, that engagements with the holders and creators of stories and narratives held by academics, practice and policy agents of change, are all exciting, nascent and potential sites of action for both climate change and development. In the words of Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. (1992, p. 190)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).