Jola Ajibade

I am an environmental and human geographer. I apply environmental justice and political ecology lenses to study the intersection of climate change, urban sustainability, and societal transformation. My research focuses on how individuals, communities, and cities respond to global environmental change, and their different capacities for adaptation, resilience, transformation, and long-term sustainability. Specifically, I explore the impacts of uncritical climate solutions, resilience planning, and sustainability practices on marginalized communities. This includes examining unjust disaster risk reduction strategies, managed retreat programs, water-consolidation schemes, tree-planting, blue-green infrastructure, renewable energy, and future city planning. I interrogate when, where, how, and why some of these solutions foster uneven development, promote gentrification, and increase social inequality, thereby exacerbating vulnerability in already underserved and disadvantaged communities. I also examine social, economic, and political contexts as well as policies, community engagements, and institutional arrangements that allow just forms of adaptation and resilience to thrive.  My scholarships and engagements are at the intersections of multiple scales: communities, cities, regions, and international levels. 

In my work, I emphasize incorporating feminist, decolonial, and antiracist approaches and care ethics that can lead to more just, livable, and sustainable futures. I also advocate for justice-centered transformative ideologies that allow for articulating multiple and alternative trajectories of future socio-environmental and socio-economic possibilities, i.e., human-to-human and human-to-nature assemblages. This includes exploring unconventional approaches and partnerships such as the role of grassroots coalitions, cooperatives, social entrepreneurs, and small businesses in promoting a shareable economy, sustainable lifestyle changes, low-carbon development, and socially just resilience planning in cities.