Climate Change and Global Justice: New Problem, Old Paradigm?

Climate Prospects, 2022

One of the persistent claims among the diverse debates and struggles in climate change is climate justice. Although climate change is impacting the globe wholly, it does not impact all nations and groups equally. Not only that, but also the very contribution to the formation, increase, and continuity of greenhouse gases differs among countries, as not all states contribute equally to the global emissions of greenhouse gases. Even within states, claims of climate justice are raised by MAPA (Most Affected Peoples and Areas)1 as climate changes hit disproportionately across the unequal lines of income, social status, gender, and urbanity. An extra demand was introduced to the climate justice sophisticated dilemmas: the temporal/climate justice or intergenerational justice that considers the demands of youth and the fate of future generations. However, through these entangled lines of debates, the discourse of climate justice tends more and more to forget its main mission. It is to understand the needs of underdeveloped counties to develop and industrialise, and this requires slower paces for curbing climate changes unlike the developed world. Yet, the current global discourse on climate justice tends to ignore this demand and press more for a concerted global action using new and challenging claims for climate justice.

As a global issue that requires urgent concerted action, climate change and climate justice are an intensely debated topic in international political philosophy. At the same time, the politico-philosophical debate struggles to determine if and how remedial responsibility can be attributed beyond political boundaries and for current consequences of long past occurrences. This article proposes to advance the debate in three steps. First, recent politicophilosophical debate will be analyzed under the angle of the kinds of knowledge it mobilizes for its purpose, starting out from the 'veil of ignorance' as an epistemic device selectively allowing or denying access to knowledge. Post-Rawlsian reasoning will be surveyed in the light of the ways of dealing with these boundaries of knowledge and their consequences. In the second step, these boundaries are considered in the light of the image of the global political constellation that they convey. Rather than offering any general truth about liberaldemocratic societies and their environment, they are shown to be deeply impregnated by the late twentieth-century context in which Rawls created them. Based on the insight into this historical contingency, elements of a conceptual history of political responsibility for justice will be provided. Rawls's own notion of 'public conceptions of justice' provides an entrypoint for enabling us to see that what he offered was one such conception, but not a 'concept of justice', in his understanding of this term. The article concludes, thirdly, with observations of an emerging conception of global justice that has the potential of effectively addressing the question of political responsibility for climate justice.

Climate justice has evolved as a critical lens through which to understand both the causes and consequences of climate change, particularly for marginalized populations. While discussions of justice in relation to climate began prior to the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, the concept has gained significant traction in recent decades. Climate justice broadly encompasses two dimensions: the unequal responsibility for climate change and its impacts, and the justice implications of climate responses that may reinforce or exacerbate existing inequalities. The idea is rooted in earlier movements for environmental justice, anti-racist activism, and critiques of global economic systems. Key principles-such as "polluter pays" and "common but differentiated responsibilities"-have been embedded in international frameworks, recognizing the unequal capacities and vulnerabilities of states and communities. Civil society movements have played a vital role in shaping the discourse, particularly by highlighting the "climate debt" owed by the Global North to the Global South and by resisting technocratic and market-based solutions that often sideline the voices of the most affected. This abstract outlines the multi-layered history of climate justice, emphasizing its theoretical foundations, activist origins, and growing prominence in global climate governance.

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2016

Political philosophers commonly tackle the issue of climate change by focusing on fundamental interests as a basis for human rights. This approach struggles, however, in cases where one set of fundamental interests requires one course of action, and another set of fundamental interests requires another course of action. This article advances an alternative response to climate change based on an account of global justice that gives weight to utilitarian, prioritarian, and luck egalitarian considerations. A practical application of this pluralistic account is provided, which shows that it handles trade-offs between individuals’ interests in an appealing way, and that it supports an aggressive policy of climate change mitigation. This account provides a more plausible justification for rights against the harms of climate change.

Managing Global Warming, 2019

Ethics in managing climate change most often involves two issues that are tightly connected. The first involves considerations about the just distribution of entitlements and burdens, and the second concerns the fair differentiation of responsibilities. The chapter explains the most important ethical implications of international climate politics and shows why justice plays a key role in all areas of climate policy. Furthermore, it introduces the main domains of climate justice: historical, global, and intergenerational justice. Depending on the policy area at issue, different combinations of principles of climate justice seem most appropriate. The chapter concludes by showing that the differentiation of responsibilities depends not only on which principles of justice are employed but also on the particular climate policy area and level that are at issue.

The Geographical Journal, 2021

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has raised alarm bells globally (IPCC, 2021). While IPCC assessments over several decades have warned how rapidly climate change has been occurring and the increasing need to halt rising global temperatures, action has been tragically slow. Given how relatively quickly institutions, states, and citizens across the globe responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, it became evident that drastic and rapid response to climate change is possible. While climate breakdown has been acutely experienced across several regions and communities for quite some time, a delayed but welcome global-level public consciousness to climate change has awoken as climate-related disasters have become more profound. While mainstream debates around climate change have historically been scientific and technical, and climate action has been mired in delays as well as climate denialism (Lamb et al., 2020), greater attention is increasingly given in public discourse to climate justice. Climate justice helps to reframe mainstream debates to usher in critical attention to social impacts, outcomes, and justice concerns. In general terms, climate justice scholarship demonstrates how climate change is a moral and justice issue, not just a science, techno-managerial, or finance issue (Gardiner, 2011; Shue, 2014). In other words, climate justice fundamentally is about paying attention to how climate change impacts people differently, unevenly, and disproportionately, as well as redressing the resultant injustices in fair and equitable ways. The goals are to reduce marginalization, exploitation, and oppression, and enhance equity and justice. Applying a climate justice approach is an intentional process that involves carefully analyzing who is excluded or marginalized by climate change processes as well as any adaptation or mitigation

Planning Theory & Practice

Where I write from, in southeastern Australia on the lands of the Kulin nation, now called Melbourne, the stark and terrifying dimensions of injustice in a climate changed world feel very present. As this season's unprecedented bushfires in Australia took hold, we stared the new normal, of living in a climate changed world, in the face. It looked a lot like the dimensions of injustice that are already known all too well, but with much sharper and more concerning edges. Dimensions of climate injustice came into view that were perhaps previously hidden or obscured, the distributional aspects of effects and impacts so obviously burdening those already disadvantaged. Climate justice is a framework that brings into view the intersection between climate change and the way social inequalities are experienced as structural violence. Climate justice has grown in public debate and grassroots campaigning over the past decade, where not for profits and environmental NGOs in particular increasingly make the connection between human rights, uneven development and climate change. Often presented as a question of human rights, climate justice debates are often focused on the distributional effects of climate changepointing out that those effects disproportionately burden the poorest and least disadvantaged. Much discussion in the climate justice field has examined the global maldistribution of climate change impacts, particularly between developing and developed nations. Linked with the understanding that developed nations are the biggest producers of the emissions that induce climate change, the ways that privileged nations and groups redistribute the effects of the harms they produce to burden the poor somewhere else, becomes clear. In this Interface, we bring together scholars, educators, practitioners and activists to consider climate justice from a range of perspectives that extend and deepen these more established lines of thinking. The papers examine questions for planning that are perhaps less obvious or explicitly discussed in climate justice debates. The intention here is that these issues might become more prominent in our thinking and practice. Hence, the contributions interrogate issues such as planning education, the norms of the profession, the research that underpins knowledge about climate change, and the sharing of that knowledge as justice questions in and of themselves. The papers also focus on the principal dimensions of planning response and activity in relation to climate change, especially in key sectors such as housing, and also adaptation planning. Taken together, the papers reveal that how planning responses are framed, articulated and enacted is itself a live climate justice question. The contributions reveal the importance of ongoing efforts to

Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP), Sagorica Complex-B, Suite #1/South, 46, Mirpur Road, Dhaka-1205, Bangladesh., 2013

The research finds out the effects of the concept “Climate Justice” which emerged to address the issues and concerns that arise from the intersection of climate change with race, poverty and pre-existing environmental risks. The analysis and discussions surrounds the climate negotiations, which needs an ethical base leading to emergence of climate justice. After determining the factors of vulnerability this research shows that the actual victims of climate change are the world’s poorest. It continues to discover the question about the necessity of climate justice. We will try to find the matter of hope which is lightening slowly like a “Firefly” showing how climate justice can actually prove to be an effective movement.

Case Studies in the Environment, 2021

This essay provides a broad-based and jargon-free introduction to climate justice to foster critical thinking, engaged discussions, and profound reflections. It introduces the reader to three dimensions of justicedistributional, procedural, and recognitional justice-and shows how each relates to climate justice. A unique contribution of this essay is to identify and discuss the following three blind spots in the debates on climate justice: (1) the tendency to focus heavily on post hoc effects of climate change while ignoring the root causes of climate change that also contribute to injustices; (2) assuming incorrectly that all climate action contributes to climate justice, even though some types of climate responses can produce new climate injustices; and (3) although scholars have studied the causes of climate injustices extensively, the specific pathways to climate justice remain underdeveloped. This essay concludes by showcasing a few examples of the ongoing pursuits of climate justice, led by social justice groups, local governments, and some government agencies.