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In this episode of Future Perfect | Futures Antérieur, hosts Liliane Umubyeyi and Meghna Abraham welcome Ruth Nyambura, a Kenyan ecofeminist and organiser, to discuss the biodiversity crisis in Africa and its links to colonial and neo-colonial exploitation.

Nyambura explains that biodiversity loss is not just an environmental crisis - it is a political and economic crisis driven by industrial agriculture, extractivism and trade policies that prioritize foreign interests over local communities. Biodiversity loss directly impacts food security, water resources and traditional livelihoods, disproportionately harming local communities, especially women, who are often the primary stewards of land and ecosystems. She highlights the fisheries crisis in Senegal, where EU policies are depleting marine resources and devastating food security and livelihoods.

She criticizes false solutions such as carbon markets and biodiversity credits, which financialise nature while displacing indigenous and local communities. Instead of corporate-led conservation, she calls for anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and feminist approaches that empower communities to protect biodiversity on their own terms.

The episode ends with a powerful message: there can be no biodiversity justice without systemic change. It is not enough to 'conserve' nature while maintaining economic systems that extract, exploit and destroy. For true biodiversity justice, she insists on radical change, including land rights, reparations and grassroots resistance to reclaim ecosystems from exploitative forces.

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Ruth Nyambura is a Kenyan feminist and organizer whose research interests are primarily on the agrarian political economy/ecology of Africa as well as other parts of the Global South. She has previously worked as the head of advocacy for the African Biodiversity Network (ABN).

Nyambura has written extensively on various aspects of the current agrarian transformations in Africa with her overall work focusing on the ideological underpinnings of the ‘New Green Revolution in Africa’ and its ties to philanthrocapitalist organizations such as the Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

Nyambura’s research also analyzes the rapidly changing policy and legislative frameworks across the continent related to biosafety and Trade-Related Aspects of the Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime which are not only criminalizing the rights of small-holder/-peasant farmers to use their traditional/indigenous seeds but are also opening up the space for foreign agri-business companies on the continent.

Nyambura is the founder and convenor of the African Ecofeminists Collective as well as the No REDD in Africa (NRAN) Collective which challenges forest-related carbon markets and documents the impacts of these schemes on local communities in Africa.

She is also a board member of the Climate Justice Fund (CJF).

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In this episode of Future Perfect | Futures Antérieur, hosts Liliane Umubyeyi and Hélène Himmer welcome Meghna Abraham, an international human rights lawyer and expert on economic, social and cultural rights, to discuss the biodiversity crisis, its causes and possible solutions. Meghna explains that biodiversity loss is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with up to one million species at risk. This threatens the resilience of ecosystems and their ability to mitigate climate change. The main drivers of this crisis are land-use change, deforestation and extractive industries, largely fuelled by overconsumption in high-income countries, which consume six times more resources than low-income countries.

It highlights how colonial legacies and trade policies continue to exploit the Global South, perpetuating economic inequalities and reinforcing destructive agricultural and industrial models. Despite growing awareness, international frameworks favour market-based solutions such as 'bio-credits', which allow companies to offset environmental damage rather than stop harmful practices. Meghna argues that true accountability requires a justice-based approach, including legal responsibility, reparations and stronger protections for indigenous and most affected communities.

Meghna Abraham calls on civil society to challenge corporate control of biodiversity policy and advocate for a fundamental shift in global economic structures. The conversation underscores the need to shift the narrative around biodiversity, reframing it as a justice issue rather than an environmental concern, and demanding change that prioritises conservation, equity and sustainability.

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Meghna Abraham is an international human rights lawyer and expert on economic, social and cultural rights. She has led campaigns, investigations, and policy development to reform unjust economic policies and models and worked with communities for over two decades to challenge the negative impacts of these policies and models on their lives. She currently advises foundations and NGOs on strategic and policy issues and is also focusing on reparations for harms arising from the climate and biodiversity crises.

She was formerly the Executive Director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR). Prior to joining CESR, she was employed by Amnesty International, including as the Director of Global Issues, Head of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Senior Researcher on Corporate Crimes. Meghna has also worked at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, International Service for Human Rights, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, World Organisation Against Torture, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex, and Centre for Child and the Law at the National Law School. She has been an expert consultant for various NGOs and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Meghna is the Chair of the Board of the Natural Resource Charter Limited, a member of the Advisory Council of the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights, and a Fellow of the Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre. She is a qualified Indian lawyer who holds a BA LLB (Hons) degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and BCL and MPhil in Law degrees from the University of Oxford.

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This episode of Future Perfect | Futur Antérieur features Professor Fadhel Kaboub, who highlights the urgent need for decolonizing climate frameworks alongside a radical global economic transformation. He critiques the existing global financial system, in which $2 trillion flows annually from the Global South to the Global North, moving in the wrong direction while undermining development. Kaboub argues that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank exacerbate this imbalance by imposing conditionalities through loans, deliberately creating debt crises that keep the Global South trapped in cycles of dependency.

Fadhel Kaboub highlights the lack of sovereignty over food, energy and technology in the Global South, which limits the ability of these nations to negotiate as equals. He calls for South-South cooperation to challenge these dynamics and build alternative financial architectures that prioritize just transition and sustainability.

The conversation emphasizes that climate justice cannot be achieved without addressing the root causes of inequality—insisting that the global system must be decolonized to achieve decarbonization. Market-based approaches like carbon trading are dismissed as "pollution permits," designed to maintain the extractive colonial hierarchy through greenwashing. Kaboub advocates for transformative measures such as debt cancellation, unconditional grants, and the equitable transfer of green technologies.

He stresses that Africa must no longer serve as a source of cheap labor and raw materials for the Global North. True economic and climate justice requires a radical transformation, rethinking of economic roles, not mere reforms. Kaboub concludes with a call for collective action among Global South nations to dismantle exploitative systems and create a new framework for sustainable development that ensures justice for all.

Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is the author of Global South Perspectives on substack. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development, an expert group member with the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, a member of the Earth4All Economic Transformation Commission, a Steering Committee member with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, a member of the African Forum on Climate Change, Energy and Development, and serves as Senior Advisor with Power Shift Africa. He has recently served as Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Southern Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His most recent co-authored publication is Just Transition: A Climate, Energy, and Development Vision for Africa (May 2023). He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and is working on climate finance and developme

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