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There is overwhelming consensus about the science of climate change. Climate politics, however, remains volatile, driven by perceptions of injustice, which motivate policy resistance and undermine policy legitimacy. We identify three types of injustice. The first pertains to the uneven exposure to climate change impacts across countries and communities within a country. Socially, politically, and economically disadvantaged communities that have contributed the least to the climate crisis tend to be affected the most. To address climate change and its impacts, countries and subnational units have enacted a range of policies. But even carefully designed mitigation and adaptation policies distribute costs (the second justice dimension) and benefits (the third justice dimension) unevenly across sectors and communities, often reproducing existing inequalities. Climate justice requires paying careful attention to who bears the costs and who gets the benefits of both climate inaction and action.

This paper develops policy measures for a “just transition” based on a case study conducted in Germany’s Rhineland lignite mining district. Semi-structured guided interviews served as the methodological approach. Expert interviews were conducted with representatives of citizen initiatives, trade unions and the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The results reveal the need for policy measures in different areas: First, employees working for subcontractors of the lignite industry have a high risk of losing their jobs because there are virtually no support policies for them. Second, there needs to be more input by civic initiatives regarding the process of structural change. And last, land needs to be prevented from becoming a scarce resource in the Rhineland area due to current mining legislation. We use an actor-centred institutionalist framework to derive governance approaches in line with the needs of various stakeholders.

While UNFCCC negotiations generally have adopted a neoliberal version of the contestedconcept of climate justice in the last 30 years, the acceptance of the Loss and Damage Fundduring COP27 indicates a possible shift in the climate justice discourse. To examine possibleshifts in the portrayal of climate justice, statements delivered by state representatives fromfive coalitions during COP21 and COP27 have been analyzed using a qualitative framinganalysis. The coalitions represent both victims of climate change and the causers of it. Theanalysis has been based on a theoretical framework consisting of six different climate justiceframes: neoliberal, distributive, intergenerational, rights-based, transformative, and ecologicaljustice. During COP21, a clear division appeared between ‘victim coalitions’ who portrayedtheir own vulnerability and partly described the injustice of climate change, and the ‘causercoalitions’ who foremost used neoliberal framings of the issue. During COP27, the divisionwas less obvious. Rights-based framings increased in prominence, but fragmentation withinthe coalitions was observed. The controversy did no longer seem to revolve aroundportraying vulnerability. Rather the division was split between the critical states demanding atransformative shift in the global climate regime, and the uncritical ones. The study indicatesthat alternative justice norms continue to break new grounds in the UNFCCC framework, butthe specific implications on politics are yet to be seen.

I den här uppsatsen görs en jämförelse mellan två aktörer på den klimatpolitiska arenan, den svenska staten och miljörörelsen. Syftet är att jämföra och analysera aktörernas syn på klimatfrågan med särskilt fokus på säkerhetisering och klimaträttvisa i ljuset av ekologisk modernisering som dominerande diskurs i det klimatpolitiska samtalet. Genom en diskursanalys av Sveriges första klimatpolitiska handlingsplan samt textmaterial från Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen och Extinction Rebellion visar denna studie på hur frågor om säkerhet och rättvisa nedprioriteras i statens sätt att prata om klimatfrågan. Detta förstås utifrån att ekologisk modernisering alltmer blivit den dominerande diskursen i svensk klimatpolitik. Det är i jämförelsen med miljörörelsens sätt att prata om klimatfrågan som detta blir som tydligast. In this thesis, a comparison is made between two actors in the climate policy arena, the Swedish state and the environmental movement. The purpose is to compare and analyze the actors’ perspectives on the climate issue, with a particular focus on securitization and climate justice in the context of ecological modernization as the dominant discourse in the climate policy conversation. Through a discourse analysis of Sweden’s first climate policy action plan, as well as textual material from two different environmental groups in Sweden, Naturskyddsföreningen and Extinction Rebellion, this study demonstrates how issues of security and justice are deprioritized in the state’s discourse of climate issue. This finding is understood in the light of ecological modernization as the dominant discourse in Swedish climate policy. It is in the comparison with the environmental movement’s way of talking about the climate issue that this becomes most evident.

Die Klimakrise trifft nicht alle gleich, ganz im Gegenteil. Sie unterscheidet nach race, Gender, geografischem Standort, soziökonomischem Hintergrund, Alter, körperlicher Einschränkung und vielen anderen Kategorien. Am Beispiel von Black, Indigenous und Women of Color (BIWoC) zeigt dieser Beitrag auf, dass einerseits eine besondere Betroffenheit marginalisierter Gruppen in Bezug auf die Klimakrise besteht und andererseits es genau BIWoC sind die nicht nur führende Rollen in der Klimabewegung einnehmen, sondern von deren spezialisiertem Wissen, basierend auf ihrer intersektionalen Unterdrückung, ihrem (Überlebens-)Kampf und ihrer Art Wissen zu produzieren und weiterzugeben, die Klimabewegung auf ungeahnte Weise lernen kann. Anders als häufig angenommen, ist die Klimabewegung im weiten Sinne nicht "zu weiß", sondern es sind tatsächlich Black, Indigenous und People of Color, die diese Bewegung seit Jahrzehnten prägen. Es wird Zeit, dass sie die Anerkennung und Wertschätzung erhalten, die ihnen gebührt. Auf eine kurze Analyse der Ursprünge intersektionalen Feminismus in Schwarzen Feminismen und den Kämpfen Schwarzer Frauen folgen in diesem Beitrag theorie-basierte und durch Interviews mit BIWoC Klimaaktivistinnen gewonnene intersektional-feministische Guidelines für die Klimabewegung. Sie sind ein Angebot, um der Klimabewegung zu einer Vision zu verhelfen, in ihrem Protest die Verwobenheit und gegenseitige Bedingung globaler Herausforderungen zu berücksichtigen; anzuerkennen, dass diese unterschiedlichen Auswirkungen für marginalisierte Menschen haben und den Schutz von Menschen sowie der Umwelt gleichermaßen in den Vordergrund zu rücken. Um der Klimakrise die Stirn zu bieten, bedarf es einer radikalen Systemveränderung, Klimagerechtigkeit bildet die anzuwendende Strategie und Intersektionaler Feminismus liefert die Perspektive zur Umsetzung. The climate crisis does not affect us equally, quite the contrary. She distinguishes between race, gender, geography, socioeconomic background, age, (dis)ability and many more. Taking Black, Indigenous and Women of Color (BIWoC) as an example, this article shows that on the one hand, there is a specific vulnerability many marginalized people are facing in terms of the climate crisis and, on the other hand, that it exactly BIWoC who are leaders within the climate movement. Based on their specialized knowledge, intersectional oppression, fight for survival and particular ways to produce knowledge, the climate movement can use the guidance of BIWoC. Unlike often assumed, in a wider sense, the climate movement is not "too white" - it has actually been Black, Indigenous and Women of Color who have been shaping the movement for decades. It is about time they receive the appreciation and recognition they deserve. After a short analysis of intersectional feminism being based in Black feminism and the struggle of Black women, this article proposes intersectional feminist guidelines for the climate movement, based on theoretical-conceptual analysis and interviews with BIWoC climate activists. These guidelines are an offer to help the climate movement form a vision to focus its protest on the consideration of the interdependence of global challenges; recognize that the climate crisis does not affect us equally and finally, equally prioritize the protection of the people and the planet. To tackle the climate crisis, we need system change, climate justice is the proper strategy and intersectional feminism provides the perspective for a successful implementation.

Renewable energy (RE) projects are increasingly contested. We present bio- and wind energy projects in Argentina, Mexico, and Nicaragua with reference to different frameworks of justice. We bridge ...

Experiences of and responses to climate change are diverse, influenced by many socioeconomic, spatial, and physical factors. Academics and activists have called for climate policies and practices that affirm climate justice; ensuring that climate policies cater for all rather than reinforcing existing systemic inequalities. Climate justice often focuses on the scale of the urban through climate urbanism, which is emerging as a new mode to consider how urban lives are lived in relation to the climate crisis, mitigation, and action. Criticisms exist that climate urbanism is a continuation of neoliberal urbanism with little to no consideration of marginalised groups’ experiences. However, by only considering dominant narratives within climate urbanism, we risk perpetuating the inequalities that already exist for marginalised groups. Building on the work of academics, artists, and activists working with indigenous communities, this article advocates for an intersectional approach to climate urbanism amongst marginalised groups. An intersectional approach allows scholars to investigate groups of people through multiple axes of identity and consider the kyriarchal multiple systems that dominate and oppress people. I contextualise the need for an intersectional approach by looking at Irish Travellers as a marginalised group and the current Irish climate policy context. Lessons from climate action in one marginalised group can enable broader conceptualisations of concepts such as climate justice and climate urbanism. As an emerging research agenda, to prevent the reproduction of systemic inequalities through climate policies, academics need to advocate for intersectional climate urbanism.

In the current crisis period, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have provided a framework for new norms about governance of and access to external financing that emphasize stimulating investor interest and creating a suite of innovative instruments to address major development challenges. However, the inadequacies associated with extant financing streams are in sharp relief since they do not address damages and losses associated with the climate crisis. The current global configuration aimed at generating from “billions to trillions” of development finance are awfully mute on historical responsibility for the uneven and extreme consequences facing climate-impacted communities in the Global South. This paper interrogates the role of the SDGs, in particular SDG17, in both adducing financialisation as an evolutionary process, further extracting profit from racialized communities, and a source of instability in the global economy. It points to the manner in which the “trillions” deemed necessary are ostensibly mobilized in pursuit of financial returns to be made from climate disaster that generate further debt, dispossesses racialized populations in the global south, and thereby ushering in a new era of “bond-age” and coloniality. Current development financing arrangements under the SDGs would increase the cost burdens and compromise the Global South’s capacities to democratically manage and meet their developmental needs due to accumulating losses and damage from major extreme climate-induced events. Loss and damage compensation for marginalised developing countries at the forefront of the climate crisis must therefore come from another source: climate reparations. Climate reparations offer an appropriate encompassing philosophical and policy apparatus for first understanding the magnitude of climate breakdown, and second for mounting a response to ongoing environmental harm in vulnerable countries that is centred on climate justice.

Written in the run-up to the COP26 summit held in Glasgow, this review essay reflects on theological tools for the climate justice movement in conversation with five recent books. Reviewed works: Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2021) Thomas Lynch, Apocalyptic Political Theology: Hegel, Taubes and Malabou. Political Theologies (London: Bloomsbury, 2019) Alastair McIntosh, Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2020) Hannah Malcolm, ed., Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church (London: SCM Press, 2020) Frances Ward, Like There’s No Tomorrow: Climate Crisis, Eco-Anxiety and God. (Durham: Sacristy Press, 2020)

Summary Growing evidence suggests that climate adaptation responses that do not incorporate equity considerations may worsen inequality and increase vulnerability. Using data from a systematic review of peer-reviewed empirical research on adaptation responses to climate change (n = 1,682), we present an assessment of how social equity is considered in adaptation across regions, sectors, and social groups. Roughly 60% of peer-reviewed literature on adaptation responses considers social equity by reporting on which marginalized groups were involved in planning or implementation. Articles on responses in Africa and Asia and those focusing on poverty reduction most frequently considered social equity. Equity was less likely to be considered in adaptation responses in Europe, Australasia, and North America, as well as in literature focused on cities. Income-based inequity was more frequently considered than gender, age, or Indigenous status. Ethnic and racial minorities, migrants, and people with disabilities were rarely considered. Attention to the levels and forms in which equity is integrated into adaptation research and practice is needed to ensure just adaptation.

The U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) 2021 report on solar geoengineering research is a political intervention in global climate politics. Although the NASEM report explicitly acknowledges the risks of unilateral research without broad-based public participation and global governance, the report minimizes these concerns by recommending that the U.S. act swiftly to establish a publicly funded national research program. By providing details for how the research program should be designed, the report contradicts its own recommendations for an inclusive and international process. By mainstreaming solar geoengineering, the report risks increasing the likelihood of international conflict and unilateral deployment, and further exacerbates delays in prioritizing other climate actions. Instead of expanding research on global manipulation of the earth’s climate, the United States, like other countries around the world, should commit to multilateral, coordinated efforts to phase out fossil fuels, advance global climate action, and invest in climate justice. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

A string of corporate litigation cases in the United Kingdom highlights the role of corporate group structures in complicating efforts to impose liability on parent companies for the activities of their subsidiaries, particularly where those subsidiaries are located in the Global South. Corporate group structures serve to insulate parent companies against liability for actions of their subsidiaries. This is the case even where economic benefits accrue to parent companies, which are often incorporated in the Global North. These group structures cabin liability for environmental and climate harms within subsidiary companies through reliance on company law principles such as limited liability and separate legal personality. These company law principles allow parent companies to enjoy corporate profits from the activities of their subsidiaries but disavow liability for any environmental damage resulting from such activities. This dichotomy has obvious equity implications, which are exacerbated in the extractive industries and in the context of climate change. Negative climate impacts are and will be felt predominantly in the Global South. In addition, environmental damage removes avenues of climate adaptation for vulnerable populations. But company law principles are not impervious to these equity challenges. These principles have never been absolute and courts have consistently found exceptions to them, although those exceptions have fluctuated in effectiveness and frequency over the years. Recent decisions by the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in the United Kingdom imposed duties on parent companies for environmental damage caused by their subsidiaries. Cases following the decision in Chandler v Cape Industries illustrate tension between company law as interpreted in the Global North, and climate and environmental justice as experienced in the Global South. Climate change forces a reconceptualization of company law, including transnational corporate liability. This paper argues that these reconsiderations are not only appropriate, but given the contested histories of many of these companies in the Global South, long overdue.

Climate change shapes human migration through the interaction of environmental changes with political, social, economic, and demographic drivers of mobility. Low-and middle-income countries bear the brunt of the health impacts of climate change and migration, despite their overall low contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The CIHLMU Symposium 2021 aimed to explore the complex interconnections between climate change, migration and health from diverse global perspectives. A number of themes, such as the relationship between climate and trade, the role of technology, and the issue of responsibility were tackled. The speakers also highlighted the need for climate resilient health-systems, gender mainstreaming in climate strategies, collaboration between the Global North and South and urgently defining the ‘climate refugee’. It is crucial that the narrative around climate change moves from an environmental framing to encompass human health and migration within climate discussions and strategies.

In previous works, I examine inferential methods employed in Probabilistic Weather Event Attribution studies (PEAs), and explored various ways they can be used to aid in climate policy decisions and decision-making about climate justice issues. This paper evaluates limitations of PEAs and considers how PEA researchers’ attributions of “liability” to specific countries for specific extreme weather events could be made more ethical. In sum, I show that it is routinely presupposed that PEA methods are not prone to inductive risks and presuppose that PEA researchers thus have no epistemic consequences or responsibilities for their attributions of liability. I argue that although PEAs are nevertheless crucially useful for practical decision-making, the attributions of liability made by PEA researchers are in fact prone to indicative risks and are influenced by non-epistemic values that PEA researchers should make transparent to make such studies more ethical. Finally, I outline possible normative approaches for making sciences, including PEAs, more ethical; and discuss implications of my arguments for the ongoing debate about how PEAs should guide climate policy and relevant legal decisions.

Natural resource conflicts in Mali in the last decade represent an important case to visualise the interconnection between land and climate issues. The country has received significant international attention in recent years both due to the announcement of large-scale land deals and due to its perceived vulnerability to climate stress. At the same time, Malian peasant movements have formed important networks of resistance and have been leading the pilot implementation of village land commissions to recognise and manage community resources, based on a new Agricultural Land Law. This paper explores emerging trends in natural resource politics through the lens of interactions between land and climate policies and discourses. We analyse the growing use of the frame of ‘climate security’ to associate climate change, conflict and migration in relation to countries such as Mali, by looking into the possibilities that this frame could shift focus and blame towards conflicts between marginalised groups and further close space for bottom-up participation. As an alternative, we explore the relevance of a platform of agrarian climate justice and the possibilities and challenges of enacting some of its principles through the implementation of the village land commissions.

Climate justice provides a crucial framework to embed issues of equity and justice into COVID-19 recovery strategies. The pandemic, alongside climate change, is disproportionately impacting the mos...

Extinction Rebellion (XR) has rapidly risen to prominence in the last two years, but in part because of the group’s meteoric rise, there are relatively few academic analyses of it. This paper draws on collective-action framing theory to examine the engagement of one XR group–XR Norwich–with notions of climate justice. Drawing on ten in-depth interviews conducted in mid-2019, it argues that despite general concern for the global South, XR Norwich members mostly framed climate change in terms more reminiscent of mainstream environmental policy makers, rather than the radical climate justice movement. This raises questions about the extent to which XR Norwich engages their members on climate justice concerns, whether XR Norwich is more concerned with generating appeal instead of offering radical solutions, and whether such a strategy might lead to factionalism within the broader XR movement.

Caribbean populations face increased displacement, dispossession and debt burdens due to shocks related to climate change. As the major neighbouring power that is the most significant historical contributor to global warming, the United States has persistently deflected from this responsibility. Instead, its climate plans are weaponized to target potential climate refugees who constitute a ‘national security threat’ and are faced with risks of premature death. These policies also aim to create green capitalist peripheries following racial capitalist logics. The paper contends that US climate interventions and policies increase the likelihood of Black dispossession within Caribbean societies. These policies commit to supporting so-called ‘left-behind’ white communities in need of a ‘just transition’, while Caribbean racialized subjects are not as equally deserving. To explain this, the paper examines major climate policies, in particular the recent Congressional Climate Action Plan of the US House of Representatives and President Biden’s climate proposals. It juxtaposes policy claims against political actions and racial capitalist historiography of the United States, especially its past treatment of climate refugees from the Caribbean. This analysis shows the persistent ways in which US climate policies advance organized abandonment and a neocolonial relationship predicated on an unjust system of racial capitalism.

Although UNESCO has a stated aim to incorporate culture into all development policies, culturally integrated approaches to realising the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are arguably yet to gain widespread traction. Focusing on cultural practices relating to music and sound, this article explores the role of culture and cultural policy in advancing the SDGs in the Asia-Pacific, through three case studies. In Indonesia, a local project to document and sustain the music of the Indigenous Marapu people is generating positive health and wellbeing (SDG3), equality (SDG10) and community sustainability (SDG11) outcomes. In Australia, River Listening shows how artistic uses of underwater soundscapes can encourage local communities to learn about, and take action to support, life below water (SDG 14), while also increasing climate awareness and action (SDG13) and advancing sustainable cities and communities (SDG11). In Vanuatu, the Leweton Cultural Village is a community-led cultural enterprise advancing climate justice (SDG13), gender equality (SDG5), culturally appropriate education (SDG4), and economic prospects (SDG8) for the community, as well as increasing its resilience (SDG3). The authors consider how these and other examples might inspire deeper integration of culture, particularly cultural practices featuring music and sound, into policy efforts to achieve the SDGs in the Asia-Pacific.

This PhD thesis sets out to rethink climate responsibility in line with a new Economic Activity Principle. The Economic Activity Principle holds that agents should be viewed as climate responsible for and in proportion to their economic emissions that are A) inconsistent with a sustainability threshold, B) emitted above an economic capability threshold, and C) emitted after a knowledge threshold. The sustainability threshold follows from the Paris Agreements temperature limits which aim to prevent dangerous climate change. The economic capability threshold aims to protect the goals of equity and development. And the knowledge threshold ensures that once there is agreement on sufficient knowledge, ignorance can no longer serve as justification for evading climate responsibility. The Economic Activity Principle is designed here such that the resulting climate responsibility concept derives from and serves the central goals of effectiveness and equity in the international climate governance regime. I identify the national level of agency as the appropriate level for bearing climate responsibility as nations are the only agents capable of simultaneously fulfilling all climate responsibility requirements developed and defended here. Overall, the thesis provides a normatively defensible, practically useful, and empirically measurable concept of climate responsibility. Its results show that current ways of thinking about climate responsibility based on countries territorial emissions misrepresent climate responsibility by placing undue burdens on poorer and predominantly export-oriented countries.

The climate crisis is here and an urgent matter for social justice. Prominent social work advocacy for climate justice is growing, though still rare. With the climate denial and environmental protection rollbacks of the Trump administration (2017–2021) behind us, and with the Biden-Harris administration’s (2021–present) early commitments to climate action, where to for social work advocacy for climate justice? This essay focuses on the need and opportunities for social workers to “connect the dots” for how climate change intersects with a range of areas of work, engage in dialogue across difference to build alliances, and multisolve for climate justice together.

This viewpoint paper discusses the rise of blockadia as a global anti-extractivism movement over recent decades. It elucidates blockadia’s distinct characters and implications for future grassroots...

This paper explores the extent to which participatory budgeting (PB) contributes to climate change adaptation and mitigation, based on an analysis of initiatives from 15 cities and regions in the global South and North. PB contributions are far from marginal, with significant investments decided by local people. The paper highlights some of the numerous innovations introduced to integrate PB into climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. Through a scrutiny of 4,400 PB projects, the research identified six categories of climate-related projects encompassing hardware as well as software approaches, such as awareness-raising activities, community-based early warning projects and research. The paper advocates for solidarity PBs for climate justice, and raises awareness of the huge (and as yet largely untapped) potential for this to help address the dramatic impacts that climate change has on millions of people’s lives. It also points to questions for future research.