Advancing Reparative Pathways for Debt and Climate Justice in a Transatlantic Perspective Across Africa and the Caribbean: the case of cocoa producers in Ghana and Trinidad & Tobago

This research is organised around four work packages: 

Work Package 1 - Historical study 

Dr Maël Lavenaire will lead historical research including:

1. Archival investigations in the UK National Archives targeting the documentation of the Colonial Office and the Secretary of State of the Colonies regarding the Gold Coast as well as Trinidad & Tobago, respectively (1945-1957) and (1945-1962)
2. Historical analysis combining data analysis with a literature review on neocolonialism in Africa and the Caribbean, plus contemporary documentation on G7 and G20 summits.

Work Package 2 – Political economy analysis

Dr Kofi Asante will provide expertise in social anthropology, political economy, stakeholder engagement, and contextual expertise on Ghana’s sovereign debt and development. Also, a researcher at the University of the West Indies (TBD) will be engaged to provide expertise in sovereign debt, climate finance, political economy, contextual analysis, and stakeholder engagement in Trinidad & Tobago.

Work Package 3 – Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Senior Atlantic Fellows Lucia Makamure, Sasha Jattansingh and Josephine Chiname will conduct this research. Community workshops in cocoa-producing communities will enable communities to identify inequalities and harms, document lived experiences of climate-induced loss and damage and collaboratively co-develop a reparatory justice framework and solutions. The draft participatory methodology and toolkit to assess loss and damage developed by Sasha Jattansingh will be used to guide PAR workshops.

Work Package 4 – Ethnographic fieldwork

Led by the Senior Atlantic Fellows, primary data collection for this study will involve conducting key informant and in-depth interviews with individuals who hold critical knowledge on sovereign debt, climate vulnerability, rural livelihoods, and reparatory justice debates in Ghana and Trinidad & Tobago.

Co-PIs:

Sasha Jattansingh is an AFSEE Senior Fellow and a climate finance and participatory environmental governance professional with over 15 years of experience in the public, international development, and civil society sectors in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean. She currently works as the Deputy Director and Senior Adaptation Loss and Damage Expert at Climate Analytics Caribbean where she works with Caribbean Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) to address critical issues related to loss and damage, adaptation, and climate justice.

Dr Maël Lavenaire is a Caribbean historian and Visiting Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute. He specialises in the history of socio-racial inequalities in Caribbean plantation societies around a comparative approach including Jamaica, Guadeloupe and Martinique (19th – 20th century). His research delves into a sociohistorical approach to social change in the post-slavery plantation societies of the Americas which examines the pervasiveness of structural inequalities inherited from colonial slavery and its contemporary incidences.

Lucia Makamure is an AFSEE Senior Fellow and fiscal justice campaigner and a gender expert with over 15 years of experience in gender and fiscal justice, spanning across national, regional, and global civil society organisations. She is currently the Operations and Programme Quality Lead at the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs). 

Research Team: 

Dr Kofi Asante is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ghana. His research lies at the intersection of political, economic, and historical sociology. His substantive research areas include state-building, citizenship, and the political economy of development. His research over the years has focused on exploring the emergence, transformations, and contemporary character of the Ghanaian state, as well as the implication of these political economy trends on citizenship and civic engagement. 

Josephine Chiname is an AFSEE Senior Fellow and a social justice and movement lawyer who is passionate about business and human rights, climate justice, environmental child rights, and sustainable and equitable natural resource governance. She specialises in research, advocacy, stakeholder engagement, strategy and programme design, and process facilitation in these critical areas.