“Advancing Climate Justice for Positive Peace: My Applied Field Experience With Oxfam America”
By Oliver Ebwor (Duke MIDP ’26)
Summer 2025 AFE Blog Post Series
As a Rotary Peace Fellow, it was an honour and a privilege to serve as an intern with Oxfam America, an experience that deepened my global outlook, enhanced my professional capacity, and brought life to many of the concepts I studied in the classroom. More than a field assignment, my time with Oxfam offered meaningful engagement at the intersection of peacebuilding, environmental governance, and climate justice.
Oliver interning with Oxfam from his study room
Oxfam is a global organization committed to ending poverty and injustice. Through lifesaving support during crises and long-term advocacy for economic justice, gender equality, and climate action, Oxfam amplifies the call for equal rights and opportunities for all, so that people everywhere can thrive, not just survive.
During my placement, I worked with the Climate Justice team, where I was inspired to embody Rotary’s principle of Service Above Self. It was in this context that I often recalled the words of Wangari Maathai: “Environmental degradation directly contributes to conflict and instability, while sustainable management of resources and a healthy environment are fundamental to lasting peace.”
This insight shaped my understanding of how environmental challenges like deforestation, land grabs, and climate-induced displacement contribute to fragility and fuel conflicts. I came to see how climate change, perhaps the most defining challenge of our time, has far-reaching consequences for peace and human mobility, and that a peaceful, just society requires collaborative climate action and sustainable natural resource governance.
Through my work, I was introduced to land-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and the growing prominence of carbon markets as a climate mitigation tool. These mechanisms, often implemented in the Global South, aim to harness natural ecosystems like forests to sequester carbon and attract private finance. However, I observed that these projects, while well-intentioned, can sometimes deepen inequality. In several cases, local communities faced exclusion from benefit-sharing, dispossession of their ancestral land, and even forced evictions in the name of carbon sequestration.
In response to these emerging concerns, I was assigned to research and present a paper on “The Socio-Economic and Environmental Risks of Carbon Market Projects in Africa, with a Focus on Local Communities.” The paper explored the disconnect between climate finance goals and the lived realities of project host communities. I identified policy options aimed at improving community engagement, ensuring equitable benefit-sharing, and safeguarding indigenous rights, principles critical to achieving sustainable development and what Johan Galtung refers to as Positive Peace.
This experience affirmed for me that climate justice is inseparable from peacebuilding. As articulated by Collaborative for Development Action (CDA) in its concept of Peace Writ Large, the transformation of societies requires addressing structural drivers of conflict, including climate injustice.
In conclusion, my Applied Field Experience with Oxfam America reaffirmed the urgent need for inclusive, accountable, and rights-based climate action. It is only through such efforts that we can achieve not just environmental sustainability, but enduring peace.