What is climate justice?
Climate change is definitely an environmental issue. However, it also has a distinctly human impact. There are historical, social, and political issues that impact how climate change is created and how its effects are felt. This is where climate justice comes in.
Think of climate justice as the pair of glasses we have to put on to transform the blurry, overwhelming and far-reaching effects of the climate crisis into a focused vision of what is happening as a social and political crisis.
Understanding climate justice is really important, as it can help us better address climate change. There are three key ideas that make up the climate justice framework:
- The climate crisis was disproportionately caused and will be disproportionately felt
- Environmental activism is always intersectional
- To stop climate change, there must be a system change
So, let’s improve our vision of this crisis!
The climate crisis was disproportionately caused and will be disproportionately felt
Sadly, the way climate change is impacting people around the world is very unfair. The richest and most powerful countries are causing the most damage, while the poorest and most disadvantaged countries are the ones suffering the most.
Let’s take a look at who has emitted the most greenhouse gases and caused the most environmental degradation:
- Until 1882 more than half of the world’s cumulative emissions came from the UK alone
- Up until 1950, more than half of historical CO2 emissions were emitted by Europe
- the US has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions
- this is twice more than China – the world’s second-largest national contributor
- One billionaire emits one million times more carbon annually than anyone else outside of the richest 10% of the world’s population
Check out this video to see how unjust this is!
Now, let’s take a look at which communities will bear the brunt of the climate crisis:
- Climate models show us that the countries that have contributed the least to climate change are likely to experience the strongest increase in temperature variability
- Temperature fluctuations are projected to be smaller in more wealthy countries but to increase in countries with low GDPs.
An example of this imbalance is the fact that communities living in small island nations such as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu are being forced to relocate due to rapid sea level rise. Despite this, climate refugees currently have no legal status under international refugee law. Check out this video to learn more:
Environmental activism should always be intersectional
The disproportionate nature of the climate crisis has deep political, historical, and social roots.
In the words of environmental activist Leah Thomas:
“Social injustice and environmental injustice are fueled by the same flame: the undervaluing, commodification and exploitation of all forms of life and natural resources, from the smallest blade of grass to those living in poverty and oppressed people worldwide.”
‘Intersectional environmentalism’ is about looking at the bigger picture, and seeing how social activism is closely intertwined with environmental activism. It allows us to understand how factors such as age, race, place and socio-economic status lead people to experience the climate crisis differently and worsen pre-existing inequalities. Learn more about intersectionality here.
Take the experience of women in coastal Bangladesh, where married mothers are responsible for collecting water for their families and are expected to eat less when food supplies are short in order to put the needs of their families first.
Climate-crisis-induced saline contamination of water means Khulna women are forced to walk two kilometres further each day to reach safe water, and soil salinisation has made yielding crops challenging, which hits women the hardest.
Or, take tree inequality within the US, where the rich have about 15% more tree cover and as such live in neighbourhoods about 3 degrees cooler than the poor. While in 67% of US communities, POC neighbourhoods (areas where more people of colour live) have less tree cover than white neighbourhoods. This is an example of environmental racism.
To learn more about these inequities, the relationship between colonialism and capitalism as well as decolonial, sustainable, and care-based approaches towards nature, head over to our page on ‘Decolonising Environmentalism’ and learn about the concept of Country in our First Nations glossary.
Check out this video from The Intersectional Environmentalist for a quick summary of this perspective (and follow them while you’re there if you like their approach!).
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Stop climate change = making the system change
So, using the logic of the current system that created the crisis in order to solve the crisis doesn’t seem like the most effective response. Similarly, requiring all countries to meet the same climate mitigation requirements when not all countries had equal roles in creating the crisis, nor have the same economic power to respond to the crisis, doesn’t seem like the most just response.
Likewise, blaming the day-to-day buying decisions of regular individuals or the newly high-polluting countries, such as India or Brazil, for the climate crisis isn’t fair. As they attempt to balance global power by catching up with the capitalist production of the colonial powers. This response doesn’t take into account countries that are historically accountable and billionaires who are polluting far more than the average person.
Additionally, allowing those who have benefited most from and are able to avoid the worst effects of the crisis to be in charge of defining how to tackle it also doesn’t seem like the most productive response.
So what might climate justice-informed action look like? Head through to our article ‘How to take climate action’ to find out!
How to apply the climate justice lens
Now that we have an understanding of the climate justice framework, we can start applying it in our day-to-day lives. Here are some ways to get started!
Ask yourself, is it actually ‘clean’?
Take a look at this Tesla advertisement, which claims that buying an electric vehicle is good for the climate. At first glance, it’s pretty convincing.
But when we apply the lens of climate justice, we can see that while electric vehicles have zero CO2 emissions, the extraction of the cobalt minerals needed to make the lithium-ion batteries that run these vehicles is far from ‘clean’ or sustainable.
Cobalt mining in the Congo is managed by multinational corporations and has forcibly uprooted people from their homes ravaged the country’s landscape and led to widespread deforestation. The ‘clean energy’ supply chain relies on a Congolese workforce that is paid $3.50 a day and is subject to unsafe working conditions (touching and breathing cobalt is toxic) as well as workplace violence.
Although the Congo has more cobalt reserves than the rest of the planet combined, it is important to understand the colonial dynamics of capitalism. The West historically and presently have an extractive relationship with exploited African nations. This helps us figure out how it is that the Congo remains one of the five poorest nations in the world, while Tesla alone has a yearly net worth of $706 Billion USD.
Ask yourself, is it actually accessible?
In our article on climate change, we referred to the IPCC’s reports a lot. The IPCC has released a lot of helpful information on climate change… but who is actually able to access this info?
At age 17, activist Sophia Kianni realised that this report was only formally translated into the six official UN languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese) — these six languages account for less than half of the world’s speaking population.
So, with the help of 10,000+ young volunteers in 80+ countries, she translated the report into 100+ languages, so that the majority of people on the frontline of the climate crisis could understand the documents and agreements being issued by the world’s highest international political body.
Ask yourself, is it actually decolonial?
Check out this interaction between Greta Thunberg and another climate activist.
As Greta discusses the intersections between Palestinian justice and climate justice, a man interrupts her saying “I have come here for a climate demonstration, not a political view.”
Through our climate justice lens, however, we can see that these two ideas — “climate demonstration” and “political view” — can never be separated. Greta emphasises the need for system change in response to climate change, where she chants “No climate justice on occupied land.” This statement shows how the social, political and environmental impacts of colonialism are intertwined.
Abeer Butmeh, founder of a Palestinian Environmentalist NGO, outlines how she witnesses “daily that for Palestinians, climate change is not just a natural phenomenon, but a political one.”
For more information on how colonialism and climate justice overlap in Palestine in order to further sharpen the focus of your climate justice lenses, download this toolkit.
With sharpened climate justice perception, we can better understand the truth of the climate crisis. We can also envision ways to respond to the crisis and radically reimagine our future!
