Trust and Distrust in Global Connections between Africa and the Global North in an Age of Climate Catastrophe: lessons from the pluriverse

This chapter explores issues of trust and distrust in Africa’s global connections with the Global North in an age of unprecedented climate catastrophe. Humanity is on a path to nowhere and the most vulnerable, including many communities in Africa, are bearing the brunt of the damage caused by the externalization societies in the Global North, who are largely responsible. Besides examining concrete climate change issues the chapter also explores debates about trust, trustworthiness and distrust to determine the transformational potential of distrust and what is needed to establish and foster a degree of trust in those who have been most affected and until now have been largely left in the cold. Moreover, investigating the potential of the pluriverse, it is discussed how other ways of framing the problem and solutions, taking inspiration from struggles by indigenous communities in the Global South (GS) against capitalist expansion, may open up new ways of tackling the global climate and ecological challenges ahead. Breaking away from a dominant worldview based on global capitalism, we need new answers that may be found in what Escobar (2016) calls epistemologies of the South. These pluriversal lessons are subsequently linked to the potential of degrowth to achieve more progressive, structural transformation in terms of climate justice.