Media and the Geographies of Climate Justice: Indigenous Peoples, Nature and the Geopolitics of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change has universal, global implications and uneven, particular local effects. Examining how this complex phenomenon is understood in public discourse calls for the merging of theorizing on geography, justice, nature and the mediation of environmental protest. This article combines these strands to discuss relationships between peoples, places, politics, nature and the media in terms of climate justice. Empirical examples are drawn from interviews conducted with indigenous activists and observations of press events organized by indigenous groups during a U.N. climate summit. We argue that the “misframing” of indigenous peoples at international climate summits underlines the necessity to integrate the perspectives of marginalized, transnational groups and their growing demands for climate justice into future media research on climate change, and the need for a re-framing of the mediation of climate change.

Keywords

• climate justice
• indigenous peoples
• geography
• media
• climate change
• international politics
• nature
• transnationalism
• misframing
• representation.