Grassroots environmentalism and Collective solidarity: Reading I Am Farmer: Growing an Environmental Movement in Cameroon as a sustainable narrative

Payel Pal

doi:10.59045/nalans.2026.104

Authors

Payel Pal The LNM Institute of Information Technology Jaipur Author https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6240-7856

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59045/nalans.2026.104

Keywords:

Grassroots environmentalism, environmental conservation, collective solidarity, sustainability, graphic narrative

Abstract

Grassroots environmentalism refers to activity aimed at urging multinational corporations, political institutions, and international entities to adopt environmentally sustainable practices in response to existential challenges posed by climate change, anthropocentrism, and capitalism. While in the Global North, grassroots environmentalism is more into conservation-focused areas, zero carbon emissions, degrowth, and related developmental issues, environmentalism in the Global South is about resisting climate coloniality and neocolonial and extractive practices and engaging in militant, radical, and insurgent activities to combat environmental injustice, toxicity, land grabbing, unsustainable ways of industrial expansion, health hazards and silencing of Indigenous and marginalised voices. Considering the activist aspects of Global South’s environmentalism, this study revisits and recognises the activism of Dieudonne Tantoh Nforba, commonly referred to as Farmer Tantoh, a Cameroonian environmentalist and founder of an organisation, through an analysis of the graphic narrative I Am Farmer: Growing an Environmental Movement in Cameroon (henceforth, I Am Farmer), authored by Baptiste Paul and Miranda Paul, and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon, published in 2019. The article focuses on environmental activism by people from Africa and how their stories are featured in several graphic narratives and accordingly examines how such narrative representations champion the necessity of collective solidarity and sustainable ethics as essential attributes for an improved future.

Author Biography

Payel Pal, The LNM Institute of Information Technology Jaipur

Payel Pal is an Associate Professor of English at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LNMIIT, Jaipur, India. Her research areas include South Asian Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Ecology, and Film and Cultural Studies. Pal is one of the associate editors of the journal Global South Literary Studies and as well as one of the series editors the Routledge book series South Asian Literature in Focus.

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