A Little Bit More About Me
Welcome, my full name is Georges Alexandre Lenferna. Although I typically go by Alex and in South Africa I have also been given the Zulu name of Xolani. Both sides of my family are from Mauritius – a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, deeply vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In 1983, my parents moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was born, grew up and went to school.

At the age of 19, I moved from Johannesburg to the town of Makhanda in the Eastern Cape of South Africa to attend (the university unfortunately still known as) Rhodes University. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Organisational Psychology, I went on to study an Honours and Master of Arts in Philosophy focusing on global justice, poverty, and environmental ethics. In the second year of my masters, I had the honour and the privilege of being selected as a Mandela Rhodes Scholar – a formative and inspiring experience which introduced me to incredible leaders from across the African continent.

Alongside my studies in South Africa, I was involved in, helped found and/or led several primarily youth- and student-driven organisations focused on social justice, climate justice, and sustainable development – including co-founding a student organisation dedicated to climate justice. As part of those organisations, I worked on a number of projects and campaigns, including: a campaign to fight against proposed fracking plans in South Africa;  a wildlife conservation and career education program with low income schools; and a campaign advocating for South Africa to put in place a robust, just, and substantial carbon tax.

After my studies in Makhanda, I worked with the Environmental Learning and Research Centre on community-based sustainable development and education projects, including working to support a youth cooperative that was using indigenous Xhosa knowledge to help low income families build food security and sustainable resilience. I also briefly worked with the Applied Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science, where I helped coordinate interdisciplinary educational workshops on climate change and earth systems science for university students across southern Africa. 

Then in 2012, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to undertake a PhD in the United States. I had applied in large part because the United States, as the world’s biggest historical climate polluter, was the metaphorical belly of the beast where action on climate change was most urgently and ethically needed. So I packed my bags and headed to the United States, where for six years I researched, taught and advocated for climate justice. During my 6 years in the United States, I engaged in a range of climate justice activism, playing leadership roles within a range of issues, including advocating for: a progressive carbon tax with Carbon Washington; a green new deal with the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy; for international climate finance and reparations for the global south with 350 Seattle; and for fossil fuel divestment with 350 Seattle, Divest University of Washington (UW) and Gates Divest.

In academia during my time in the States, I worked as a lecturer and teaching assistant in the UW Department of Philosophy – where I completed a Masters and PhD focused on climate justice. My masters dissertation was on climate justice and migration. My PhD dissertation was Equitably Ending the Fossil Fuel Era: Climate Justice, Capital and the Carbon Budget. I also completed a graduate certificate in climate science with the UW Program on Climate Change and a graduate certificate in environmental studies with the University of Kansas Environmental Studies Program. While studying, I also worked as a research associate several times: on climate ethics under Prof Stephen Gardiner; on questions of ethics and justice surrounding geoengineering under a National Science Foundation program; on ocean change with the UW Program on Ocean Change; and on climate change as part of the University of Kansas’s interdisciplinary climate change graduate program.

In 2018, I was awarded the Endeavour Research Fellowship which gave me the opportunity to undertake 6 months of climate justice research and advocacy in Australia, the world’s largest coal exporter and a major climate polluter, ranked then last in the world on climate action. I served as a research fellow at the University of New South Wales’ Practical Justice Initiative’s Climate Justice Research Stream. While there I got involved with the Stop Adani Movement, to stop the construction of the largest coal mine in the Southern Hemisphere. I also volunteered with the Repower Campaign to push Australia to 100% clean energy and stop new fossil fuel projects. After my time in Australia, I returned to the States to finish and defend my PhD, which I completed in December 2018. I then returned back home to South Africa, where I have been working on a range of climate justice initiatives.

From April 2019 – July 2022, I worked as Senior South African Climate Justice Campaigner with 350Africa.org, Through that work, I helped co-found and was elected the inaugural secretary of the Climate Justice Coalition – a coalition of South African trade union, civil society and community organisations. As a coalition, we are engaged in a range of advocacy, education, activism, litigation, and research to advance a transformative and radical vision of climate justice. One of our central pieces of work is our campaign for a Green New Eskom – calling for a rapid and just transition to a more socially owned, renewable energy powered economy, that provides clean, safe, and affordable energy for all with no worker or community left behind in the transition. We also host a podcast called Just Us and the Climate – where “we bring climate change back down to earth and show how it’s not only a crisis, but an opportunity to build a better, more just world”.

In April 2022, I was re-elected, then as the general secretary of the coalition. The coalition’s work was growing immensely then, including a growing membership base, an elected steering committee, and the employment of a small secretariat. As such, in August 2022, I stepped down as campaigner at 350 Africa and took on a post-doctoral research fellowship. The move was largely aimed at giving the coalition some independence from 350.org, so that it’s general secretary was not serving as campaigner for 350.org, but rather more focused on the coalition’s work. The position helped give me independence and allowed me to focus on research and education work to support the coalition.

I then served another term in the leadership of the Climate Justice Coalition, until December 2024 when my constitutionally limited two terms in leadership were over. An exciting new array of elected leadership took the reins, who I am supporting to take the coalition’s work forward. During my time at the helm of the coalition, I am particularly proud of a few pieces of important work that we did. My top three are:

• Hosting a national dialogue on social ownership of renewable energy and helping develop a policy recommendation report, which was adopted by South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission as well as the office of the Presidency.
• Organising a nationwide protest and campaign against the harmful, polluting, and extractive practices of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. Those protests led to threats of lawsuits, intimidation, and a misinformation campaign against the coalition by Minister Mantashe and others.
• Developing a national political school on climate justice, which brought together over 70 activists from across the country to deepen their knowledge, connections, and organising around climate justice. It was a powerful event that was hosted in KwaZulu Natal in solidarity with the victims of the terrible flooding there, and included a protest to demand justice for them.

The work of serving in the leadership of the Climate Justice Coalition was one of the most rewarding and rich experiences of my life. It was also one of the most challenging and difficult, as I spoke about here. As such, after five years of hard work at the helm of the coalition and a decade of hard activism before that, I took a break for the first half of 2025 to recharge, reflect, and restrategise, as well as spend vast amounts of time in the ocean, freediving, spearfishing, surfing, harvesting seafood, cooking seafood, and more.

Parallel to serving in the leadership of the Climate Justice Coalition, I was also a postdoctoral research fellow at Nelson Mandela University, from August 2022 to July 2024. In that role, I investigated questions of climate and energy justice, and provided research and education support to the climate justice movement, with significant focus on the Climate Justice Coalition. As always, I have made all my research from that time freely available on Academia.edu website.

In July 2025, I took on a role as a Research Fellow at the Fort Hare Institute of Social and Economic Research (FHISER) at the University of Fort Hare. My research there aims to produce a range of publicly accessible scholarship and materials aimed at deepening public understanding, education and mobilisation around a transformative climate justice agenda. As part of the research fellowship, I am working on two book projects, starting with one entitled, Overthrowing Eco-Apartheid: And Winning a World Worth Fighting For. At the end of December 2025, I am shifting to the role of an unpaid research associate at FHISER, so that I can take on the role of South Africa team lead for Research +Action.

R+A is a small non-profit organisation that provides those working for climate justice with data, research and investigative infrastructure, advice and support to outmaneuver fossil fuel propaganda and disinformation, and to spot trends and opportunities to win the change we seek. In my role as South Africa team lead, Alex will help start and build a small team that will work together to support South African climate justice movements and partners. I begin that task in November 2025. Hopefully exciting things to come!