Local Activism for Global Climate Justice

The Great Lakes Watershed

Patricia E. Perkins

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000487459
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book will inspire and spark grassroots action to address the inequitable impacts of climate change, by showing how this can be tackled and the many benefits of doing so.

With contributions from climate activists and engaged young authors, this volume explores the many ways in which people are proactively working to advance climate justice. The book pays special attention to Canada and the Great Lakes watershed, showing how the effects of climate change span local, regional, and global scales through the impact of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, with related economic and social effects that cross political jurisdictions. Examining examples of local-level activism that include organizing for climate-resilient and equitable communities, the dynamic leadership of Indigenous peoples (especially women) for water and land protection, and diaspora networking, Local Activism for Global Climate Justice also provides theoretical perspectives on how individual action relates to broader social and political processes.

Showcasing a diverse range of inspirational and thought-provoking case studies, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate justice, climate change policy, climate ethics, and global environmental governance, as well as teachers and climate activists.

1

Introduction

Climate justice, the Great Lakes, and the Earth

Patricia E. Perkins (with Martin Sers)

Climate change is the major crisis of our time—perhaps the most daunting ­challenge in human history. Between 20,000 years ago and 2016, human activity increased the levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere from 240 to more than 400 parts per million (ppm), causing the global average temperature to rise more than 1°C. If emissions continue at the present rates, atmospheric CO₂ will reach 500 ppm before 2070, raising temperatures 3°C or more, which will cause rapid sea level rise, mass migrations, species extinctions, extreme weather, and threatened food supplies (Jones 2017; see Box 1.1).

Addressing climate change is especially difficult because it worsens existing inequities among people. Some geographic locations are hit harder than others by extreme weather events or rising sea levels. Those living in poverty, or who are marginalized because of factors such as their gender, race, or ethnicity, have fewer resources at their disposal, fewer options, and less resilience to meet catastrophes caused by the changing climate. These may include disease epidemics, food and housing shortages, infrastructure destruction, fires, floods, and droughts, forced migration and political violence.

The vulnerable include other species too. Humans have caused mass species extinctions, with an estimated 30 to 50% of all animal and plant species possibly threatened with extinction by mid-century (Center for Biological Diversity 2017).

Box 1.1: The scope and scale of climate change

By Martin Sers

Previous shifts in Earth’s climate, which include those caused by asteroid impacts, have led to mass extinctions of 50 to 90% of life on Earth, sometimes over millions of years. The speed at which human-produced CO₂ emissions are rising, in a geological blink of time, means that we humans are now in a race against a closing window of time. The burden and obligation of avoiding the worst aspects of climate change fall on those humans who are alive now, in the first century of this millennium.

In the next several decades, the choices made by societies may largely determine the fate of posterity for humans and many other species. The reality that the Earth-system possesses dynamics that, once set in motion, are largely unstoppable on human time scales, implies that we have essentially one chance at mitigating our impacts.

As such, the choices of just a few generations will echo into geological time and potentially determine the fate of much of life’s commonwealth. Climate justice and just action imply a special and enormous burden on current generations; the obligation to posterity implies that we, in the small amount of time remaining, find some way to avoid the darkest aspects of Earth-system change.

The inherent difficulties associated with determining what constitutes just action, especially when considering the problem of scale (temporal and physical) and the concerns of non-human life, imply that any single conventional justice framework may be inadequate. Just as the impacts of climate change are unequally distributed, so too is the responsibility, obligation, and ability to make meaningful change.

Excerpted from Sers, M. (2017), “Climate justice and the closing window for meaningful change,” unpublished working paper, Economics for the Anthropocene. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v8amp;pid=sites8amp;srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxtYXJ0aW5yb2JlcnRzZXJzfGd4OjRlYTMyM2JjYzRhOWE4NDE

The term “climate justice” expresses the visionary hope that humanity as a whole will be able not only to stop climate change, but to do so fairly (see Box 1.2). The most vulnerable deserve special support and protection; their consumption of fossil fuels is low so their responsibility for the problem is tiny in relation to richer, wealthier consumers. This is as true within rich societies as it is between wealthy countries and poorer ones, although the global injustices are orders of magnitude larger. But climate-related injustices exist at all scales, from the local to the global, and this includes inequities in power within the socio-political systems which have created climate change in the first place.

Thus, the climate justice research and policy perspective means acknowledging that these inequities exist (rather than ignoring them or assuming them away), and actively investigating their causes, specific impacts, and the links between addressing them and resolving climate change itself. For example, Indigenous peoples’ opposition to pipelines and extraction calls attention to not only the violence and unjust impacts of colonialism on Indigenous peoples, but also the ecologically and socially sustainable Indigenous governance systems which colonialism attempted to crush. By centring ecological sustainability, reciprocity, and resilience, Indigenous governance shows that humans need not inevitably wreck the Earth (Whyte 2017, 2018a, 2018b; Trosper 2009). This imparts particular gravity, respect, and importance to Indigenous leadership and activism to protect land and waters, working for multi-level climate justice.

“Climate justice” also names a movement of people worldwide who insist that equity must be front and centre in all climate-related activism and policy. As a species, human welfare is interconnected: from communicable diseases to food production and distribution in times of famine to migration options, local ecological knowledge and skills transmission, people’s destinies are interlinked. Our humanity and our survival depend on whether and how the most vulnerable are able to survive and thrive.

Box 1.2: What is climate justice?

“Climate justice” is defined by activists and academics in various ways. Here is a sampling:

A group of global non-governmental organizations developed the Bali Principles of Climate Justice in 2002, which remains a comprehensive climate justice rationale and program.

(Corpwatch 2002)

“Climate justice includes a focus on the root causes of climate change and making the systemic changes that are therefore required, a commitment to address the disproportionate burden of the climate crisis on the poor and marginalized, a demand for participatory democracy in changing these systems which require dismantling the fossil fuel corporate power structure, and a commitment to reparations and thus a fair distribution of the world’s wealth. Some articulate climate justice more loosely as the intersection of environmentalism and social justice, drawing on the intersectionality analysis developed by feminists and critical race theorists to understand the interlocked workings of race and gender” (Hall 2014).

“A complicated array of equity and social justice issues besets efforts to fashion global responses to climate change. They include specific questions as to who bears the responsibility for the legacy of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions, and whether such emissions were essential for livelihood support or resulted primarily from the growing affluence of populations. Climate justice also involves issues of how climate change is associated with other broad inequalities in wealth and well-being, dissociations between those who will benefit from and those who will bear the burdens and damage associated with climate change, procedural justice issues as to how decisions have been made in structuring international approaches to assess scientific issues and creating the institutions of the global climate change regime to address the problems, and how equity issues and adaptation strategies may interact” (Dow, Kasperson and Bohn 2006:79). “Climate justice thus includes elements of both distributive and procedural justice” (Adger et al. 2006:2–4 and 263–264).

“Climate justice is a moral and political framework that 1) identifies the various moral concerns that are either causing, caused by, or otherwise raised by climate change and 2) organizes and manifests in responses to climate change, attempting to address those injustices.”

(Saad 2017:13)

(See also Jafry 2019:3.)

This book explores examples of how people are working together to advance climate justice—starting close to home, and with global awareness. The approaches, skills, and projects which are effective at the local scale bear many similarities to those that work at broader scales. So local-level activism helps people learn what to do and how to do it, and it also brings them together with others who have similar commitments and passions, building the climate justice movement—the movement for stopping climate change as soon as possible, and doing it fairly.

This is not just a bottom-up process in local communities. Diaspora networking, where recent migrants use their language skills and roots in other places to exchange information, funds, and connections to strengthen global movements, is an important though under-studied mechanism for climate justice and international redistribution (Mohamoud, Kaloga and Kreft 2014; see also Goldring and Krishnamurti 2007). Policy activism is important, where people with different degrees of political access learn from each other, build powerful movements, and hold leaders to account. Online organizing via social media, long-distance internet, whistle-blowing, art, and film are key to many global campaigns related to climate justice. The social media communications technologies of fossil-fuelled societies have made it possible for groups to self-organize and demand political action, with unprecedented global implications. An example is the dynamic leadership of Indigenous peoples (especially women) for water and land protection, in opposition to fossil fuel extraction, pipelines, violence against women, environmental destruction, and colonialism (Women’s Earth Alliance and Native Youth Sexual Health Network 2016; Whyte 2014).

Youth activists, too, have special credibility, motivation, and impact; ­wherever in the world they live, their options and future prospects are already being shaped by the accelerating climate crisis. As 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who in August 2018 began to demonstrate in front of the Swedish parliament every Friday, has stated to world leaders, “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act” (Watts 2019:n.p.). During the Global Climate Strike for the Future on Friday, March 15, 2019, an estimated 1.6 million students in more than 120 countries participated in more than 2,200 local demonstrations to call attention to global inaction on climate change (Haynes 2019:n.p.).

In some places, democratic governance allows people to organize for climate justice within the context of existing political systems. In other places or for other people, the state is repressive, hardly exists, or its legitimacy is questionable, and people find a way to organize their own responses to climate catastrophes. Social capital, community ties, and grassroots institutions for managing common resources such as land, food production, collective work and service-sharing, and watersheds—protecting their sustainability and preventing their privatization to benefit a few—are a central way that people have always maintained their livelihoods. Climate justice activism transcends market, state, and commons frameworks. Effective methods for addressing climate impacts can be seen as “unfolding along a continuum” from local, context-specific actions through participatory community programs to broad-scale government and international interventions (Singer 2019:230).

In this book, each chapter tells a story about how people are facing a small piece of the climate justice challenge. The chapters are written by activists, students, teachers, youth and community organizers, and environmentalists who are working for climate justice in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• About the cover
• Contributors
• Land acknowledgement
• 1 Introduction: climate justice, the Great Lakes, and the Earth
• PART I Fairness in public policies
• PART II Personal action and local activism
• PART III Education, consciousness-raising, and collective visions
• Action glossary
• Suggested further reading on climate justice
• Index