KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

Events
SEA seminar | Perpetuating climate injustice through private adaptation finance | Kimberley Thomas

8 July 2025

Seminar

State and development organizations have long sought private sector investment to help bankroll social projects ranging from household water provision to upgrading transportation infrastructure. In the face of skyrocketing costs of climate change impacts, such groups are increasingly looking to private firms to finance adaptation measures. 

However, private sector participation hinges on the promise of profitable returns, which raises critical questions about the nature, implementation, and outcomes of private-financed adaptation interventions. My project focuses on efforts to scale up production of farm, forest, livestock, and aquaculture products as a market-based approach to attract private adaptation finance and reduce climate vulnerability in Asia and beyond. I argue that responding to climate change through export commodity production reproduces the ahistorical and apolitical developmentalism of generations past by rendering climate vulnerability as a primarily economic and technical problem rather than what it is—a product of colonial racial capitalism.

Speaker

Kimberley Thomas is an Associate Professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of Geography, Environment and Urban Studies and Director of the Climate Justice Field School at Temple University. Her research on environmental justice and agrarian change in South and Southeast Asia examines the political economy of climate adaptation and the relational production of security and insecurity. This work has been published in a variety of journal outlets, including Global Environmental Change, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Political Geography, Development and Change, and WiRES Climate Change. Currently she is a visiting fellow at KITLV.

Moderator

David Kloos is a historian and anthropologist with a focus on Southeast Asia. His main interests are religion (particularly Islam), gender, the politics of knowledge formation, visual methods, and the study of the social, political, and cultural aspects of climate change. 

Format, date, time & venue

This seminar is a hybrid event and will be held in the conference room of KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30, Witte Singel 27 A, Leiden and online via Zoom, on Tuesday 8 July from 15.30 – 17.00 PM (CET).

Image

Livelihood security for fishers in the Mekong Delta is threatened by climate change and climate adaptation measures alike (Vinh Long Province, Vietnam). Photo: Kimberley Thomas.

Flyer

FlyerThomas 2025

Fish market

Details

Date

8 July 2025

Time

15.30 - 17.00 PM (CET)

Location

KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30, Witte Singel 27 A, Leiden and online via Zoom.

Category

Seminar

Organizer

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Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies