An Assessment of Climate Footprints through the Activities of Three Women in Yaounde, Cameroon

This thesis entitled ‘An Assessment of Climate Footprints through the Activities of Three Women in Yaounde, Cameroon’ sets out to show the (dis)connectedness of climate tools established in and for the West from local realities in Yaounde, Cameroon. It also aims to prove that the socio-cultural and economic situations of women in local communities are different from those in the West thereby, putting them at crossroads of climate footprint assessment and implementation. Theoretical underpinnings applied in this study indicate the different perspectives on the complex climate change issue, the transformations of climate discourse within given paradigms and the peculiar climate messaging and communication of the World Sustainability Fund (WSF). The three-pronged-methodology: critical discourse analysis, interview and audio/film, observation and photo used to gather data for this thesis aim at assessing the neoliberal individualistic modelling of WSF’s climate footprints and how this...Show moreThis thesis entitled ‘An Assessment of Climate Footprints through the Activities of Three Women in Yaounde, Cameroon’ sets out to show the (dis)connectedness of climate tools established in and for the West from local realities in Yaounde, Cameroon. It also aims to prove that the socio-cultural and economic situations of women in local communities are different from those in the West thereby, putting them at crossroads of climate footprint assessment and implementation. Theoretical underpinnings applied in this study indicate the different perspectives on the complex climate change issue, the transformations of climate discourse within given paradigms and the peculiar climate messaging and communication of the World Sustainability Fund (WSF). The three-pronged-methodology: critical discourse analysis, interview and audio/film, observation and photo used to gather data for this thesis aim at assessing the neoliberal individualistic modelling of WSF’s climate footprints and how this works elsewhere. This approach facilitates the communication of both the implicit and explicit experiences of the research/participants as they occur in their real live situations. Results of this study reveal that although climate impact assessment tools such as footprints could be designed with good intensions, they could equally be regarded as dangerous neoliberal power tools that ignore local sociocultural/economic realities elsewhere. The language functions of picture/text and talk around WSF’s climate footprint production rather represent broader sociocultural/political structures as exemplified in the colonial trait of its Sustainable Solutions. This study, conducted at WSF, The Hague and on three women in Yaounde, Cameroon is only a tip of the iceberg. It therefore serves as an opening for more research regarding women as actors in climate issues and the decolonisation of the climate change phenomenon. Key words: Climate change, discourse, footprints, the women, World Sustainability Fund (WSF)Show less

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An Assessment of Climate Footprints through the Activities of Three Women in Yaounde, Cameroon