Climate Justice: What does it mean and why should we care?
This essay is part of a two-part series on climate justice. In this part, we deal with the basics — what even is climate justice and where does the concept come from? In our second essay, we will look at Taiwan specifically: What does climate justice mean in Taiwan? And how can we fight for it?
In recent years, “climate justice” has become a popular concept and an important demand for the climate movement — not least due to a global wave of youth climate protests that began in 2018. During climate demonstrations around the world, one now often hears slogans like: “What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? Now!” But what does climate justice really mean, especially in the context of Taiwan?
To better understand how climate justice emerged as a concept, we have to go back to the history of the global environmental justice movement. In the late twentieth century, movements around the world began connecting environmental issues with social problems — many of them eventually became known as environmental justice movements. A famous example is India’s Chipko Movement, which saw women in the North Indian state of Uttarakhand embracing trees to protect them from being cut down by a company. The Chipko movement linked the struggle for women’s rights and the rights of hillside communities to the fight for environmental protection. The women succeeded: After several waves of protest, the Indian government mandated a 15-year ban on deforestation in the region. Other movements, such as the movement against environmental racism in the United States or Nigeria’s anti-Shell movement (led by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) combined the struggle for a better environment to the historic struggle against racism and colonialism. In Brazil, famous union leader Chico Mendes and his rubber tapper union fought for a better livelihood for Brazil’s rubber tappers, while also opposing the destruction of Brazil’s rainforests. Taiwan, too, had some important environmental justice movements — we will discuss this in more detail in the next part.
What all of these movements had in common is that they emphasized the importance of connecting social and environmental issues. They were critical of mainstream environmentalism, which they saw as merely shifting and outsourcing environmental problems and pollution to poorer areas and thereby causing environmental injustice. Instead, they called for environmental justice and the end of the exploitation of nature and fellow humans.
In the early twenty-first century, as awareness of the climate crisis grew, many groups started using the term “climate justice” to emphasize the importance of the climate crisis as an environmental justice issue. Important early documents of the climate justice movement include the “Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice” report, published by the U.S.-based environmental NGO CorpWatch in 1999, and the “Bali Principles of Climate Justice”, which were agreed upon by environmental organizations from around the world in the wake of the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit. Both documents discussed the fact that the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed. Vulnerable groups contributing the least to global warming, such as Indigenous peoples and less developed countries, often experience the most severe impacts of climate change. In contrast, wealthy Western nations or oil giants, with high carbon emissions, can afford to better adapt to many impacts of climate change.
The injustice of climate change became very tangible during a series of devastating climate-related natural disasters in the early 2000s. For example, Hurricane Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane, hit the southern part of Louisiana in the United States in 2005, causing thousands of deaths and over a hundred billion dollars in economic losses. Some articles discussing the connection between the climate crisis and racial issues began to emerge. New Orleans, with a predominantly African-American population representing about sixty percent, faced severe consequences as the majority Black and working-class areas lacked proper infrastructure like green spaces and adequate drainage. Moreover, these areas lacked timely rescue efforts after the hurricane, worsening the impact on the local black community. While the main cause of the tragedy was likely the severe shortcomings in the government’s disaster response, it provided crucial insights. As extreme weather events are becoming ever more frequent, the resulting disasters will highlight existing social inequalities.
Climate justice has since also become a popular field of academic inquiry, such as in the discipline of climate ethics. Scholars of climate justice emphasize that we should not view the climate crisis just as an atmospheric phenomenon but as a crisis that will exacerbate social issues, too. While there is still much discussion and disagreement about how we should think about climate justice, there are two aspects commonly mentioned in the current international discussion:
Procedural Justice: This concerns the policies and actions related to addressing climate change, which are often not designed fairly and justly at an institutional level. For example, at the yearly UN climate conferences (Conference of Parties, COP), governments of oil giants and high carbon-emitting countries, due to their greater influence, often obstruct or delay climate action proposals they disagree with. These proposals are usually more ambitious in bringing about change. Similar dynamics can be observed on a national level, where the fossil fuel industry often exerts great influence on government decision-making. In other words, the issue with climate change tends to be not too much democracy but rather not enough of it.
Distributive Justice: Those least responsible for climate change are often affected most seriously by its impact. On a global scale (global justice), developed countries, seen as having the largest share in historical emissions, are considered to have the greatest responsibility for climate change and should foot the bill for countries suffering from climate disasters. On a local scale, as seen in the case of Hurricane Katrina in the United States, marginalized groups facing poverty, disability, and the impact of racism emit a small portion of a country’s greenhouse gases but bear the brunt of climate impacts. Lastly, in terms of time, young and future generations, despite not being responsible for the majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions, will experience the most severe climate crises. This is the starting point for discussing generational justice, another component of distributive justice.
References:
- On the Chipko Movement and its history: https://indianexpress.com/article/what-is/what-is-the-chipko-movement-google-doodle-5111644/
- On environmental racism and the history of the US environmental justice movement: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/environmental-justice-race/
- On the Ogoni-led movement against Shell’s oil extraction in Nigeria: https://rightlivelihood.org/the-change-makers/find-a-laureate/ken-saro-wiwa-movement-for-the-survival-of-the-ogoni-people/
- On Chico Mendes and his fight for the Brazilian rainforest: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/a-fierce-green-fire-the-workers-who-saved-the-amazon-rainforest-from-deforestation/2941/
- The “Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice” report: https://www.corpwatch.org/sites/default/files/Greenhouse%20Gangsters.pdf
- The Bali Principles of climate justice: https://www.corpwatch.org/article/bali-principles-climate-justice
- Katrina: Race, Class, and Poverty: Reflections and Analysis: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flooding-disproportionately-harms-black-neighborhoods/#:~:text=When%20Hurricane%20Katrina%20hit%20southeast,%25%20Black%2C%20government%20records%20show.
- Flooding Disproportionately Harms Black Neighborhoods: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40034317?seq=1
Authors: Elias König and Sophia Chueh
