Environment and Climate Change
Peace and Human Rights
Malih Ole Kaunga is an Indigenous leader and long-standing advocate for the rights of pastoralist and forest-dwelling communities in Africa. His work connects land rights, human rights and climate justice as interdependent political and social questions.
Drawing on more than three decades of grassroots leadership, he works with nomadic pastoralists, forest communities and natural resource–dependent groups who are often excluded from dominant policy frameworks — despite their central role in stewarding land and ecosystems.
During his fellowship at the Robert Bosch Academy, he examines how inclusive and intersectional climate justice movements can connect grassroots voices with regional and global decision-making spaces.
Can a just transition truly be inclusive, people-centered and purpose-driven?
What defines inclusion — and who decides?
Rather than approaching climate governance primarily as a technical policy field, he explores land as a site of rights, belonging and political agency. His fellowship also reflects on why Indigenous rights discourse continues to encounter resistance within governmental and multilateral structures, including the global climate conventions.
The fellowship offers space to deepen these reflections in dialogue with policymakers, philanthropists, academics and civil society actors in Berlin. At the same time, he brings extensive experience in community-based organizing and transnational advocacy into the Academy’s conversations.
For Malih Ole Kaunga, questions of land, justice and climate cannot be separated — they shape the conditions under which communities can sustain both their ecosystems and their political voice.
Berlin, March 2026