Breaking the Green Bubble: Cape Town Climate Week Shows That Climate Action is For Everyone

From 8–13 September 2025, Cape Town Climate Week, chiefly organised by the African Climate Alliance, will bring together activists, community leaders, students, and citizens for a week-long event lineup exploring grassroots solutions to the climate and social crises that plague both South Africa and the world.

Cape Town Climate Week gets people on their feet, hands in the soil, peddling bikes, and riding trains – all while learning about the connections between climate change and social injustices and being exposed to organisations as the forefront of solutions. Here’s everything you need to know.

About Cape Town Climate Week

The climate crisis, spatial injustice, a failing energy system, water inequity, food insecurity, and rampant gender-based violence – these issues are all connected. For the fourth year in a row, Cape Town Climate Week will show that climate change isn’t just about weather and climate action isn’t reserved for environmentalists who went to school in leafy suburbs.

The six themes of Cape Town Climate Week 2025 are: energy justice, water justice, food justice, spatial justice, gender justice, and intergenerational solidarity.

With eight events held over six days, participants will journey through different areas of the city and witness how climate change is a threat amplifier. When the floods come, it’s those worst affected by Apartheid spatial planning that lose their homes. When the droughts come, our food and water are at risk.

But these problems aren’t too big to tackle. By learning about alternative forms of transport, housing, urban planning, energy systems, food growing, water resilience and gender-inclusive policy, overwhelm will be turned into collective grassroots action. The aim is to create a sense of curious, active citizenry and prove that there are many ways to care for our planet, communities, and generations to come. Ultimately, taking climate action has positive social impacts.

Cape Town Climate Week falls in the same month as New York Climate Week and just a couple of months after the International Court of Justice delivered a landmark advisory opinion that stated governments must take steps to protect children’s right to a healthy environment in the face of the worsening climate crisis. This is the perfect time to take steps into your own hands, and bring adaptation and resilience to your community.

Featured Events

8 September, 8.30am: Cycle for System Change. Kick off Cape Town Climate Week with group awareness-raising cycle, from Bertha House to Lange Bicycle Hub, followed by a discussion on how we navigate through a segregated city and how accessible public transport can transform our city. RSVP here.

9 September, 9.30am: Sowing Seeds for System Change. Enjoy a guided food justice tour and planting experience across Cape Town, exploring how food connects us, nourishes us, and serves as a tool for freedom and reclamation. Visit key community garden locations in Elsies River, Delft and Mitchells Plain, listen to stories of food growers, share a farm-to-table lunch and see firsthand how people are taking food sovereignty into their own hands. RSVP here.

10 September, 1pm: Climate Cafe – Energy Justice. The fossil fuel industry continues to shape energy policies, delay climate action, and obscure its historical role in driving the climate crisis. This Climate Cafe and exhibition at The Commons will combine education, interactivity, and collective action to expose the industry’s tactics, celebrate progress in holding it accountable, and empower attendees to advocate for energy justice. RSVP here.

12 September, 12 noon: Gender and Planetary Health Teach-In. Visit the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation for a teach-in that will bring together the issues of the climate crisis, maintaining pillars of health (shelter, food, medicine) and patriarchy. Using the insights from the teach-in, attendees will formulate a gender justice x climate justice statement/pledge for partners and individuals to sign. RSVP here.

13 September, 11am: Tea Between Generations: Building Movements with Care and Courage. The closing of Cape Town Climate Week 2025 will be a time to gather and share stories for collective liberation. This event is storytelling gathering that brings together youth and elders that have been involved in struggle movements. As you listen and engage with the stories of older comrades, this event seeks to create an intergenerational space to reflect on how we can cultivate everyday strategies and ideas for resistance against all systems of oppression.