2026 Essays

Learning from the Margins: Reclaiming Knowledge Justice in the Age of AI and Climate Crisis

Sathuluri, David

In this article, the author argues that global education policy faces a fundamental paradox: institutions proclaim inclusion while reproducing the same epistemic hierarchies that marginalize Southern ways of knowing. I contends that AI in education is not merely a technical problem but an epistemological one — algorithms trained on Northern data encode historical inequalities and present them as universal best practice. A parallel critique applies to climate education, where Global South communities are cast as vulnerable recipients rather than as producers of ecological and political knowledge. I calls for a shift from access to agency, urging that education be reimagined as a collective right that includes the power to define what counts as knowledge. Drawing on bell hooks and decolonial theory, the piece insists that the margins are not spaces of lack but of generative resistance. Genuine knowledge justice demands moving global governance from consultation to co-creation, making AI tools and climate curricula accountable to the communities they claim to serve.

Keywords: South Asia, AI, Knowledge Systems, Decolonial Theory, Climate Justice, Equality