Dr Jessica Omukuti
Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) and the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment (SSEE)
About
Dr Jessica Omukuti is interested in understanding how responses to climate change affect societies in the Global South. Within this, is work on the governance of climate change adaptation and mitigation, climate justice, just transitions and climate finance in the Global South.
Her most recent research - as a COP26 fellow at the University of York - has focused on governance of climate finance for adaptation. Now at Oxford, Dr Omukuti is expanding to focus on the governance of strategies for Net Zero emissions, particularly in the Global South. Her research has mainly been based on Sub-Saharan Africa, but she has also recently started focusing on governance of Net Zero in Latin America, the Caribbean and South Asia.
Expertise
- Net Zero
- Climate justice and equity
- Global South
- Decarbonisation
- Emerging markets and developing economies
- Low carbon development
- Climate resilient development
- Africa
Selected publications
- Convergences between green growth and net zero: Lessons from African countries, Omukuti J., Lezaun J., Njoroge H., Valenzuela J.M. & Olalere Y. (University of Oxford 2025)
- Governance levers for ensuring equity and justice in carbon markets in Kenya, Omukuti J., Njoroge H., Valenzuela J.M., Lezaun J. & Olalere Y. (University of Oxford 2024)
- The need for a climate-resilient development-aligned framing of innovative climate finance. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Omukuti, J. (2024)
- Can ‘Net Zero’ still be an instrument of climate justice?, Khosla, R., Lezaun, J., McGivern, A. M., & Omukuti, J. (Environmental Research Letters 2023)
- Africa Needs Context-Relevant Evidence to Shape Its Clean Energy Future, Mulugetta, Y., Sokona, Y., Trotter, P., Fankhauser, S., Omukuti, J. Croxatto, L.S., Steffen, B., et al.(Nature Energy, 2022)
- The green climate fund and its shortcomings in local delivery of adaptation finance, Omukuti, J., Barrett, S., White, P.C., Marchant, R. and Averchenkova, A. (Climate Policy, 2022)
- COP26 as an opportunity to further democratise the Green Climate Fund. (The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021)
- The value of secondary use of data generated by non-governmental organisations for disaster risk management research: evidence from the Caribbean (International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021)
- Lessons from Tanzanian forest management: Justice in environmental and climate policy transitions. In Ryder et al. (Eds) Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene From (Un)Just Presents to Just Futures (2021)
- The Green Climate Fund Is Not Doing Enough to Support Just Transitions in the Global South (2021)