Introduction

It is frequently argued that our contemporary situation is one of polycrisis, that is, it is a complex set of interactions between “problems, antagonisms, crises, uncontrollable processes, and the general crisis of the planet” (Morin and Kern 1999; see also Tooze 2023). Of these many crises, the climate crisis sits, arguably, in the very center. This ecological crisis is a calamity that rests on a multiply extracted, exploited, and disenchanted Earth. This crisis is not only of this contemporary time but has been occurring for decades due to centuries of extraction of natural resources and human labor. The crisis within our modern political economies is almost completely shaped by the fact that the extraction of raw materials forms the fundamental basis of our economics and therefore affects everything from our histories and our ideologies to labor relations and our political subjectivity (Riofrancos 2020). It is the modality through which capitalism is lived in the periphery, particularly for countries in what is defined as the Global South (Hall, Gilroy, and Gilmore 2021; Rodney and Davis 2018). As scholars working on extraction often note, the very definition of Global South is that of a “sacrificial zone,” that is, a provider of raw materials to the global economy (Ó’Briain 2024; Chagnon et al. 2022). The moral basis of our economics is purposively detached from nature, viewing land and the labor from this land as equally disposable. This detachment from nature affirms a morality in ecological negligence and destruction (Nash 2000; Conradie 2020). This detachment is also interlinked with a disenchantment with nature, numbing our sense of wonder and affecting our ethical core. Enchantment, perhaps, has a moral role to play (Becker 2019).

Various responses to the climate crisis exist, and, for organizations working in humanitarian and development capacities, most forms of “everyday” response focus on mitigation, resilience, adaptation, and anticipatory action. This article uses the word everyday here to differentiate these responses from larger interventions at policy levels that involve a whole host of government and nongovernmental agencies. The everyday responses are those focused on managing the insecurities and precarities caused by multiple climate events. For instance, in countries like Ghana and Nigeria, community-led microfinance models are deployed as a strategy for mitigating food insecurity and building climate resilience (Pienaah and Luginaah 2024). These are important interventions but can, in and of themselves, continue to sidestep the issue that the climate crisis is more than a physical and environmental challenge, more than a “problem” that requires a “solution.” Some argue that this sustains a phenomenon of ecological imperialism (Perry and Sealey-Huggins 2023).

Thinking against this backdrop, this article attempts an exploration of an ethics of rage, positing how this is and needs to be a point of ecotheological ethics. In particular, the article argues that this needs to be a key point of intervention for faith-based development, particularly in terms of international development organizations (INGOs) that wish to do more to structure their direct implementation work within a framework of justice. To not do so, as Guillermo Kerber (2013) argues, is a conflictual theology that seems to think that care for creation conflicts with human development needs. This divide, for Kerber, should now be seen as part of a flawed theology. As an example, the article highlights one form of climate-based programming often used by INGOs: anticipatory action. The particular case discussed draws from programming completed by the faith-based INGO Christian Aid, a program in which I was involved as a research evaluator. The article critiques such programming to stress the importance of rage as a point of justice-focused ethics, particularly for an organization that structures its interventions around justice-based theology. The article understands rage in many ways but is particularly tied to the kind of multilateralism “from below” that demands a different moral order.

Multilateralism from Below

A multilateralism “from below” refers to a form of international cooperation that relies on the actors of civil society and global social movements and grassroots communities rather than on political elites alone (Giraurd 2025). It is a concept particularly central to the ecological justice vision put forward by Pope Francis and other liberation theologians focused on a justice-based framework, applying the Catholic social justice teaching on subsidiarity to the global–local relationship (Francis 2023). It envisions a process that strengthens and affirms mutual knowledge sharing amongst civil society, spontaneous cultural interchange, and paying attention to the demands of grassroots movements and the communities most affected by crisis. Indeed, Francis (2023) goes so far as to ask that “citizens control political power-national, regional and municipal.” More secular political thinking would define this as a necessary step in order to lessen the hegemony of corporate interests—such as fossil fuel industries—in shaping climate responses (Ghiotto 2024). This also requires, as Marie-Claude Smouts (1999) argues from an international relations perspective, better coordination and collaboration between NGOs and major social movement groups on a wide range of intersecting issues, and thus also focusing on mitigating any contesting issues through strong coalitions (Keohane and Morse 2014). Referring to the case discussed in this article, it would then be important for large INGOs to be part of collaborations or coalitions with grassroots movements and civil society actors in order to build a global movement out of interlinked assemblages. This would also require INGOs to center the demands and knowledges of such actors rather than build large programmatic responses through a framework of humanitarian aid.

The Importance of a Justice-Based Framework

One key reason to focus on an ethics of rage is because, as liberation theologians argue, the “original sin” of the crisis is that of the logic of extraction (Nogueira-Godsey 2019). To respond to this, it is important to think not in terms of crisis but in terms of moving towards climate justice (Mendoza and Zachariah 2022). Or, to put it another way, climate change must be understood through the multiple issues, interests, and power structures that have caused it (Salter and Wilkinson 2024). Due to this, climate adaptation and mitigation efforts by international development organizations that do not consider these intersecting interests and power structures, as well as local and cultural factors, can be damaging, unethical, and contribute to the silencing of already marginalized communities (Brissman 2023). Development interventions on the ground can sometimes feel disconnected from larger arcs of advocacy and mobilization done by the same organizations, because these interventions are not necessarily focused on the climate crisis as an ethical and sociopolitical issue but rather as something to be responded to.

Speaking in terms of justice is a key framing for activists and faith actors, as well as communities on the frontline of the crisis, particularly in the socio-environmentalist movements that have existed for decades (Ranawana 2022). Indeed, if we are thinking of this as ecological imperialism, it is perhaps more correct to frame the issue as a problem of climate injustice, acknowledging that the majority world has been facing climate disaster for several decades. The heightened and apocalyptic language that now exists in the technocratic policy spaces of the Global North can arguably render silent the injustice and inequalities that have faced the majority world for a long time. Audra Simpson (2014), for instance, argues that this is why Indigenous communities engage in a politics of refusal. Political geographers and other scholars writing on climate injustice make this point several times: technocratic responses and “frameworks” that “respond” to climate events make it possible for global Northern governments to unilaterally disavow their historical responsibility (Satgar 2018). Most responses, even those that have a focus on the “common good” and sustainability, do not stop capitalist expansion and only continue to reinscribe the state.

Case Study: Anticipatory Action as Climate Intervention

This article looks at a particular climate intervention used quite ubiquitously in the global development sector: anticipatory action. As a way of presenting a case, the article draws from the results of a study conducted by Christian Aid evaluating the effectiveness of their efforts at anticipatory action. I was one of a consortium of researchers on this study, which worked collaboratively with a variety of local partners to conduct a wide-ranging consultation regarding the reach of Christian Aid’s anticipatory action interventions. In the face of climate change and manmade disasters, development and humanitarian practitioners increasingly recognize the need to anticipate and manage multiple concurrent risks. The anticipatory action terminology can vary in different contexts and according to a specific hazard. Anticipatory action is a set of actions taken to prevent or mitigate potential disaster impacts before a shock or before acute impacts are felt (Gettliffe 2021). Anticipatory action is meant to deliver the right assistance at the right time and hinges on three key considerations: timing, activity selection, and targeting (Levine et al. 2020). It is meant to act early in the event of a climate shock so that household units are, theoretically, able to mitigate the impact of a hurricane, drought, flood, earthquake, or other such event. Anticipatory action is not a direct humanitarian response or plan for action on a longer-term timescale. As such, aside from mitigating the impact of a climate event, anticipatory action is also seen as a way to build resilience within the community. Due to this, many anticipatory action-based interventions focus on the importance of cash transfers that are used primarily to protect against income loss in the case of a flood or similar event. Anticipatory action is meant to address extraordinary shocks that do not occur on a standard basis, so that, ideally, funds can be used any moment they are most needed and can have the greatest impact.

Christian Aid’s anticipation fund was implemented in four disaster-prone countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Haiti, and Syria) to support early actions to mitigate harm and loss for communities and people most at risk of crises. Through funding from StartFund, a rapid humanitarian funding network, Christian Aid Bangladesh also implemented an anticipatory action initiative. These interventions primarily included anticipatory action on social protection, livelihood, water, sanitation, and hygiene; the pre-positioning of non-food items/shelter kits to reduce winter impact; prearranged financing dedicated to funding anticipatory action for different disasters; flexible community grants aligned with the survivor community-led response approach to organizing community disaster risk response. The research evaluation was conducted in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Haiti, with a small sample also drawn from Bangladesh. Research was not conducted in Syria due to an earthquake that triggered a large emergency response, thereby making it difficult to conduct the learning review. The evaluator research combined a mixed methods approach of survey, focus group discussions, and unstructured interviews. These last two were chosen as open-ended methods through which respondents could provide unfiltered discussions of their experience. The questions asked in the survey and the focus group discussions were created through a collaborative approach bringing together the research team, community respondents, activists, and members of the team who provided the anticipatory action aid. The household questionnaire was administered to 218 heads of households or their representatives. In addition, fifteen focus group discussions were conducted in all countries to extract valuable insights and learning from the anticipatory action projects. These focus group discussions encompassed diverse participant groups from different locations, including all-male groups, all-female groups, and mixed groups.

The evaluation Christian Aid conducted on the effectiveness of anticipatory action in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Haiti found cash support has a significant impact on preparations for predictable disasters. Cash support enabled many community members to purchase livestock, particularly goats, and food items for during peak crisis times. This intervention provided immediate financial support to the community members and allowed them to meet their basic needs and address immediate emergencies, including access to food, clothing, and medical supplies. The cash assistance gave them the freedom and flexibility to decide how to allocate the funds based on their specific needs and priorities as well as allowed them to purchase goods and services from local markets and businesses, thereby stimulating the local economy. It also helped crisis-affected communities and individuals regain a sense of control over their own lives in the short term and rebuild their livelihoods according to their own preferences and skills.

The effectiveness of cash transfer as aid is primarily due to its fungibility and the ability for an organization to release small amounts of funds relatively quickly. However, this still raises questions regarding the quality of the assistance provided, particularly the amount of the cash given, whether it required bundling with other goods and services, and, most importantly, if it was truly effective in a protracted crisis, such as the chronic drought encountered in Haiti.

In Haiti, respondents noted that the drought they were experiencing was long term, beginning months before the arrival of the cash support, and that quicker mobilization or ongoing support would be welcomed. Cash aid minimizes anxiety in the short term but opens up questions of what is to be done in chronic situations. Most respondents noted that their ability to cope with the situation—and what are often multiple forms of long-term and short-term climate events—did not rest on the anticipatory cash alone but also included community-based mutual solidarity efforts, selling off any remaining assets they had, and other forms of material aid. Some participants in Haiti thought it would be very useful and far more sustainable to set up a solidarity fund in each communal section that throughout the year collects voluntary contributions from citizens wishing to support people in difficulty.

In two interviews in Malawi, respondents talked about a local “community committee” that handles assistance that comes into the village. Across the board, respondents referred to an existing culture of cooperation that is important for survival; however, some noted the chronic nature of the situation, such as ongoing drought and multiple climate shocks, affects such social cohesion and cooperation therefore it may not be sustainable. This puts the analysis in mind of what political geographers call the problem of “de-bounding,” that is, the fact that the effects of a disaster or climate event are not exclusive to a localized time or space and will spread in nonlinear ways and be affected by the present as well as historical power relationships (Beck 1992). How is anticipatory action expected to respond to not only how something will unfold in the first few months of an event but how it will mutate in terms of a variety of conditions? The effects and impacts of a disaster change frequently and are not static. As discussed, social cohesion matters, and power relationships come into play, as do oppressive political situations. In our study, two respondents noted that they were not served well by the community assistance due to political bias. In Ethiopia, one respondent noted that in order to receive aid, they ensured they were not “too political or . . . involved” so they would not receive trouble. There was also hesitancy to discuss who can access profit through certain interventions, or who might become powerful as a broker due to historical and current power relationships. As Anderson (2010) notes, the preparedness and precautionary nature of an anticipatory action are always affected by the contingencies of threat, opportunity, danger, and profit, or what he calls the productive/destructive relationships that characterize liberal interventionism.

Importantly, communities did not rely on one organization for support but accessed aid from multiple points. This was due in part to the fact that several households were already significantly burdened by debts and willing to take on more debts in order to manage their way out of the crisis they found themselves in. In fact, debt taking seems a chronic or usual activity and is not always coded as debt but as a source of additional income. It is important to understand that loans were not always used for business or trade needs but in some cases, like in Haiti, for consumption. This then translates into a situation where someone adds increasing amounts of debt to an already precarious situation. Combine this with the accessing of aid from multiple points and the increasing loan burden, and one can easily see the lack of sustainability in anticipatory action responses. Considering the increased frequency of climate events and the chronic nature of drought and famine, there is arguably room to wonder if interventions such as anticipatory action only serve to keep affected communities in a holding pattern, and thus, even unwittingly, attempt a “governance” of the affected, muting their agency to push for more systemic change such as reparative justice through a loss and damage fund. “Climate responsive” schemes like anticipatory action, as can be seen from the earlier empirical notes, mostly “manage” temporary and chronic situations. They are the management of a crisis rather than justice oriented. Further to this, by providing piecemeal action like anticipatory action, one could argue that development actors are muting and “defanging” any possible rage affected communities may feel towards the situation they are in. They become increasingly dependent on multiple forms of aid and, worse, are further trapped in debt cycles exacerbated by frequent climate events. So, we could argue that the intervention itself has not engaged with the knowledge of those most affected but rather provided a quick solution. A question that could be raised is what this intervention would look if it arose out of a more grounded multilateralism or engaged with the community efforts that several of the individuals we spoke to said they had made use of? It is very clear that individuals were making use of multiple and hybrid forms of support, as their situations were often chronic or long term.

Frameworks of Rage

The case study provides a snapshot of why certain kinds of development interventions regarding the climate crisis are inadequate and require a different set of ethics. For organizations like Christian Aid that have a theological sensibility, it may be useful to center rage as a point of ecotheological ethics. Using the framework of rage, and thus asking the question why, such organizations may then begin to center the multiple levels of displacement, the chronic droughts, and the collective dispossession faced by these communities not only as a point of advocacy but as a means of shaping programming. Rage makes policymakers and scholars attentive to global wounds and motivates the pursual of justice. The current focus on technocratics and crisis management also allows the global development sector to not reflect on its own disproportionate historical responsibility and to control the agency of marginalized groups to unite in advocacy for long-term ecological transformations, to truly support a multilateralism from below. For global development organizations like Christian Aid that profess a faith-based character, centering a theology of rage that acknowledges and recognizes that we are within a crisis of ecological imperialism is fundamental. Rage as a point of analysis and ethics reveals practical problems, such as collective dispossession, which can then mobilize various organizations, policymakers, and communities to organize together to address injustice, rather than a scenario that seeks to “manage” or technocratically intervene in a crisis. Theologically, an ethics of rage also mitigates the tendency to depoliticize analyses, or rather, it urges scholars to center a material analysis. This is important because rage is only the starting point, it transforms the episteme. From this starting point, one moves to praxis, to transformative action (Friedrich 2025). This is a pressing issue for faith-based international development organizations like Christian Aid that have a stated mission of a “better world.” The cases drawn from the evaluation of anticipatory action underline what is missing in development interventions. Faith-based INGOs can draw on liberatory theologies, particularly an ethics of rage, as a starting point for transforming their climate-focused interventions.

As discussed in the introduction to this article, this is already extant in liberation theology. Liberation theologies in particular focus on issues of international debt, the environmental impact of structural adjustment programs, the long-term impact of extractive colonialism, climate justice, and climate adaptation. This is done because of an underlying sense of rage in these theologies, in their understanding of, as aforementioned, Christ Liberator. What is suggested here is building theologies that have planetary frameworks (Balasuriya 1980). Planetary frameworks require more than rights, justice, and an equitable sharing of resources. Rage as a point of ecotheological ethics is a direct response to Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda’s (2024) question of how one can build a moral economy.

Defining Rage

Rage is a difficult concept to build an argument around, but it is not necessarily a new concept for theology, particularly liberation theology. For instance, feminist theologians and Asian liberation theologians have long argued that the way to best understand Christ is not as a liberator in the spiritual sense but in terms of his praxis in the material world he lived in (Loades and Armstrong 1990; Balasuriya 1984). Consider even the productive rage of a manifesto like the Magnificat. There is a vein of rage that runs through the Magnificat. Here is a Palestinian Jew, living under occupation, boldly declaring that God “has cast down the mighty from their thrones.” It is a cry that calls out a socioeconomic system built on injustice (Harrell 2022). It has revolutionary agency, it is political, and it envisions a people who will be free of occupation (Greer 2017). Anticolonial feminist theologians of the Global South often position their work as resistance against the “death creating” structures of capital; this displays close parallels with the vein of anger in the Magnificat (Hinga 2002; Katoppo and Fernando 1992). I have expanded upon this comparison in other work (Ranawana 2023). To read Mary as a woman with a kind of Holy Rage is a crucial way in which we can better understand the salvatory work of Christ from a liberationist approach as well as become more comfortable with concepts and emotions that may unsettle mainstream theology.

Rage is difficult, and it is disruptive. One is allowed to be in grief over, for example, climate injustice and climate disaster. This article agrees and argues for a position that is more strategically useful as a base for analysis and action than grief. How often is one allowed to feel rage at a situation that grows increasingly dire? Rage is noted by some as a “non-ideal” emotion (Dege 2024) and less attractive, shall we say, than grief. Carmen Lea Dege (2024) suggests that rage is a transformative emotion. It is often seen as uncomfortable where it has been tied to aggression, or rather behavior where an individual or organization may seek to forcefully assert themselves. This article is more concerned with where rage awakens and makes us attentive to injustice and thus mobilizes collective action for change. Perhaps we can argue that it is important to pay attention to rage as a point of ethical thinking, particularly where rage swells up and drives forward social movements. This form of rage is resistive and constructive. It is not rage that comes, necessarily, from resentment but rather from attention and awakening. It is rage organized around dismantling the conditions of injustice. That is, it motivates productive action, builds resistance, and is always informed by an inclusive and liberating perspective (Cherry 2021). For Myisha Cherry (2021), an anti-racist philosopher who has made the case for rage, there is a form of rage crucial for the transformative work social movements aim to do. Similarly, in John Caputo’s (2009) Radical Hermeneutics, one finds an affirmation of the importance of feeling outrage, particularly where religion affirms that God’s response to suffering is rage and solidarity. As Katherine Sarah Moody (2018) has noted, this is where Caputo develops his work from the mystical to the ethico-political, noting there is justice calling to be realized. Years after Caputo, Vincent Lloyd (2021) writes that when rage is “recovered,” it attunes us to questions of oppression and domination and pushes us to radically imagine a different world. Others speak of a prophetic rage that resists, creates alternative spaces of redemption (Hill 2013), and is a kind of revolutionized love (Urbaniak 2016).

Important here is that rage, as a reaction to suffering or as an adjustment of a view, can and does push the individual or community to take on a different stance, to ask the question why? Importantly, rage disrupts the “reasoned” imperial logics within which we live and which, as noted in the introduction, entrench a world in which certain communities and lands are constantly sites of extraction and sacrifice. As Audre Lorde (1997, 280) has argued, the rage expressed by those affected by injustice is often dismissed as “useless and disruptive,” but when this rage is translated into action, it can become an important part of the work towards collective liberation: “Everything can be used, except what is useful. You will need to remember this, when you are accused of destruction.”

Rage stands against “reason” and demands a radically different epistemology, one centered around the dismantling of power that maintains imperium. This occurs because rage, unlike grief, is arguably outward looking. As mentioned, it asks the question why and moves from this to the question of how. Experiencing rage at suffering or injustice is an experience that affects the heart and the mind and can cause an ontological change in the individual or community.

The idea of centering rage has long been a part of social justice conversations and literature. As such, this article joins a crowd of voices who have been pointing to rage as a way of thinking and structuring interventions, and resisting the suggestion of rage as only destructive and violent. Rather, rage is generative. For example, Sonali Chakravarti’s 2014 work Sing the Rage, which looks at how rage can be an important unifying logic for structuring transitional justice processes, gives us three ways of understanding rage. In a cognitive sense, rage allows for an understanding of the needs, interests, and fears of those most affected by a phenomenon. There is also the confrontational aspect of rage, which allows those who are building responses or solutions together to understand what is possible in terms of repair and punishment—what does justice look like in each and every context? Lastly, and this is particularly important for a grassroot multilateralism, rage infuses life and energy into long-term justice-centered work. Or, as Lorde (1997, 278) says, “my anger is a response.” As many activists have noted, the emotions experienced during a climate crisis shape and create the goals of social activism and can be highly strategic. Rage in particular can be a response that helps one resist being paralyzed by climate breakdown. Indeed, Glen Albrecht (2019, 86), looking at the link between anger and climate injustice, has coined the term “terrafurie”:

Terrafurie is the extreme anger unleashed within those who can clearly see the self-destructive tendencies in the current forms of industrial-technological society but feel unable to change the direction of such tierracide and ecocide . . . The anger is also directed at challenging the status quo in both intellectual and socio-political terms. I think of it as a protective anger, not one that is aggressive.

We can certainly see this rage being articulated in the Global South movements that have been at the center of resisting the current ecological order. Whether environmental defenders in Guatemala or farmers striking in India, we see a furious opposition to capitalist domination and struggles that work intergenerationally, pointing to the historical injustices that have brought us to the present (Posani 2009; Andersson 2021). I provide here an example from an environmental and labor activist in Malawi who was interviewed by the research team as part of the assessments on anticipatory action. It articulates some of the confrontational and cognitive aspects of anger discussed earlier:

We are invisible to the big corporations. But we will resist this, the toll is heavy; it is emotional and physical. But whatever it is we are ready. (Interview 2B)

From a separate project, I also provide the following example of rage-filled thinking from an Indigenous Christian pastor and theologian in Indonesia. It demonstrates the kinetic form of anger:

Our ancestors understood how to walk forward in knowledge and power. The harm done to the forests and the seas, this is an attack on [the Divine]. There is power in educating and mobilizing our young people. We will walk forward in this power [sic]. (Interview St. Andrews 3)

Again, we can also see this closely in the writings of Global South theologians and the articulations of Indigenous communities the world over who struggle to understand why there is little moral or political will to attend to the root causes of the climate crisis or provide reparations to the affected communities (Urbaniak 2017; Flowers 2015). Indigenous communities are faced with a growing environmental crisis as well as finding their voices/activists marginalized through technocratic approaches (Kikuyu 2020). While Indigenous peoples have a significant presence in international climate activism, their involvement in national legislation and global policymaking is marginal.

This is further exacerbated by the global model’s correlation of power, which is unfavorable to these communities. Ethnographic studies with Indigenous communities in Cambodia and Colombia, for example, have found that collective emotional responses to continued land encroachments can shift the power of state actors by subjecting them to the embodied demonstrative strength of community demands based on both “positive” and “negative” emotions (Jakimow 2023). The power dynamics evidenced in these studies show how attention to emotions provides a deeper understanding of responses by Indigenous peoples to land exclusions (Rodríguez-Garavito and Arenas 2005). The concept of a politics of refusal is a strong example of thinking from an Indigenous community that holds onto a framework of rage. As articulated by Audra Simpson (2014), the politics of refusal is best understood as an immanent unsettling of the settler [imperial] present. As the global and national state mechanisms provide interventions that neutralize the present and narrate the past, for Indigenous communities living and working to push against these logics by refusing them, the narratives that do not center justice collapse (Robathan 2018). As Betasamosake Simpson (2017, 20) notes, “if we want to create a different future, we have to live in a different present, [present different epistemologies] and let them change us.” This suggests a radical and resistant epistemology. This is true not only for Indigenous communities and activists but also for religious studies scholars working in and from liberationist perspectives.

However, it can be argued that while this rage exists and is articulated, as discussed earlier, much of the climate responsiveness by some civil society actors—like large INGOs—does not engage with the confrontational or cognitive sensibilities of those most climate affected. Rather, the most frequent responses are solution and alleviation focused rather than oriented towards larger justice coalitions. This is not to say that this kind of work does not exist in the development sector, but that the orientation of human resources and funding is not on justice work. Rather, development organizations do, in most cases, prioritize interventions over movement building. This also means that an intervention such as anticipatory action may not be fully consultative. For INGOs that are faith-based or tied to a theological focus, I am arguing for a need to recognize and integrate rage as part of the organization’s ecotheological ethics. Looking at such interventions through the lens of rage, an ecotheological and ethical stance may help to consider if such measures are contributing to resisting the logics of imperialism and dismantling historical and wider social causes of climate change. Linking to Chakravarti’s notion of cognitive and confrontational rage, rage can be a starting point for relational mutuality where different forms of knowledge are grown together to build a coalitional solution.

In the realm of policy formulation, a crucial inquiry very rarely arises: Who bears the responsibility for the crimes associated with environmental degradation? This inquiry, framed within the context of rage, highlights the profound emotional and ethical dimensions that accompany the discourse surrounding environmental crises. The interplay between human emotion, particularly rage, and ethical decision-making is crucial in understanding the societal response to environmental degradation. An ethics of rage not only reflects a sense of urgency but also raises critical ethical questions about responsibility, justice, and the moral imperative to protect our planet. To answer the question of where rage comes in, in terms of the limited mechanisms of policy: rage provides a form of knowledge borne from lived experience. Individuals may translate their rage into action and knowledge in order to build, collaboratively, a justice-based response to the climate crisis, one then owned by a grassroots multilateralism.

To fully center an ethics of rage, there is a need to move away from the characterization of environmental degradation as a “looming crisis” that threatens to usher in an “apocalypse.” This characterization facilitates a paradigm that often prioritizes immediate, technocratic responses over more reparative approaches. It simplifies the complex web of accountability, directing attention towards urgent policy measures that may overlook the deeper systemic issues at play. Examining policy decisions and political discourse regarding the climate crisis in the way described in the previous paragraph helps to further a critical examination of responsibility that not only informs the design of effective policies but also shapes the moral narrative surrounding environmental action, ultimately influencing the sustainability and equity of proposed solutions. The notion of crisis, and not justice, dilutes the imperative to critique ongoing North-led processes of militarism and imperialism that make life precarious and violent for racialized and minoritized communities in the Global South.¹

That justice and an ethics of rage are not centered is also a problem for some scholarship. For example, consider Jem Bendell and Rupert J. Read’s (2021) Deep Adaptation, a primarily apocalyptic concept. Communities in the global majority have experienced multiple collapses that have led to repeated displacement and the need to reconstruct their lives. They have already relinquished their ways of life. The technocratic solutions often prescribed to them are to “become” resilient, without any effort to tackle root causes. Reconciliation, which is prescribed by Bendell and Read, cannot look only at mutual mortality but must, first and foremost, acknowledge the historical imbalances of power and the crimes of environmental degradation committed by imperial governments and multinational corporations.

Justice is an agential demand, a request for a moral commitment, or what Pope Francis (2016) has called an “ecological conversion.” These demands have several drivers, one of which is a deep sense of grief and loss (Ojala et al. 2021); another is rage. These drivers, we can argue, challenge the technocratic responses of mitigation, adaption, and resilience, as they inhabit a different moral order, one wed more closely to enchantment and wonder, but also shock and grief at environmental disaster and the loss of things we might hold as sacred, such as land and rivers. This different moral order insists that the time for action is now (Mihai 2024). We can briefly see this in, for example, the work of theologians working in and from the Global South. Jesse Mugambi (2016), for instance, argues that the problem is not that we are ignorant of the world’s plight or that we have failed to develop a good theology of creation. The problem, for Mugambi, is one of ethics or will, and it is rooted in the very same power struggles that leave some poor and others rich.