Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice

Tahseen Jafry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781134978489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

The term "climate justice" began to gain traction in the late 1990s following a wide range of activities by social and environmental justice movements that emerged in response to the operations of the fossil fuel industry and, later, to what their members saw as the failed global climate governance model that became so transparent at COP15 in Copenhagen. The term continues to gain momentum in discussions around sustainable development, climate change, mitigation and adaptation, and has been slowly making its way into the world of international and national policy. However, the connections between these remain unestablished.

Addressing the need for a comprehensive and integrated reference compendium, The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice provides students, academics and professionals with a valuable insight into this fast-growing field. Drawing together a multidisciplinary range of authors from the Global North and South, this Handbook addresses some of the most salient topics in current climate justice research, including just transition, urban climate justice and public engagement, in addition to the field's more traditional focus on gender, international governance and climate ethics. With an emphasis on facilitating learning based on cutting-edge specialised climate justice research and application, each chapter draws from the most recent sources, real-world best practices and tutored reflections on the strategic dimensions of climate justice and its related disciplines.

The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice will be essential reading for students and scholars, as well as being a vital reference tool for those practically engaged in the field.

1
Introduction

Justice in the era of climate change

Tahseen Jafry, Michael Mikulewicz and Karin Helwig

On April 17, 2017, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide (CO₂) reading that exceeded 410 parts per million (ppm), a concentration of the greenhouse gas (GHG) not seen in the Earth’s atmosphere for at least 3 million years (Lindsey, 2017). Moreover, climatologists predict that, if unaddressed, humanity’s reliance on fossil fuels is likely to further increase CO₂ concentration to levels from the early Eocene – or over 50 million years ago (Foster et al., 2017). It is thus no surprise that temperature data from NASA shows rapid warming in the past few decades, with 2016 being the warmest on record (Cook et al., 2016). Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) highlights that the rapidly increasing atmospheric levels of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases have the potential to initiate unprecedented changes in climate systems, leading to “severe ecological and economic disruptions” (WMO, 2017, p. 1).

This evidence unequivocally points to the anthropogenic nature of climate change and therefore to the need to address what by many is seen as humanity’s greatest challenge in the 21st century. Indeed, climate change has already started to impact all aspects of social life – food production, the built environment, biodiversity, health, human security and the economy, to name but a few. Owing not just to the ever-more-detailed climate data but more importantly to the observed and lived experiences of those affected by climate impacts, it is becoming increasingly evident that a fundamental change in how our societies operate is urgently needed (Jafry and Platje, 2016). Climate change brings with it shifts in material and power balances, and a “business-as-usual” scenario will entrench or further deepen inequalities and exacerbate environmental damage. It is not unreasonable to expect that those who are materially and politically disadvantaged will bear the brunt of climate impacts, while those at the top of the socio-political ladder steer their lives towards a more climate-proof future (Mikulewicz, 2018). Issues ranging from water access and food security, to health-related impacts of chronic and acute climate events, to the political exclusion from making decisions on how to address climate change impacts and from sharing the benefits of these decisions are only some of the problems that may be in store for many countries, cities, communities and individuals over the next few decades. These challenges further complicate the prospects for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which among other human development priorities explicitly seek to reduce global inequalities and promote climate action.

That said, there has been some optimism in the international area of climate governance as of late. The painstakingly made progress in the run-up to COP21 culminated with the widely applauded Paris Agreement. The accord, which has been signed by 195 countries and ratified by 176 as of May 2018 (United Nations, 2018), builds upon the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and aims to strengthen the global response to planetary warming by limiting the rise of global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius and striving not to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, for the first time in history, and unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the accord brings all nations into a common effort to combat climate change and to adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries in doing so. As such, it charts a new course in global climate governance, aiming to secure appropriate financial flows and new technology and capacity-building frameworks to support action by the most vulnerable countries in line with their own national objectives. For instance, the COP23 in Bonn that took place in November 2017 saw policy developments around phasing out existing coal power plants by more than 20 countries, including Canada, Finland, France, Mexico and the United Kingdom; targets for scaling up biofuel use in Brazil, China, Egypt, France, India, Morocco and Mozambique; and the announcement of the “InsuResilience” global initiative, which looks to provide insurance to hundreds of millions of vulnerable people by 2020.

At the same time, however, there have been calls for scrutinising just how equitable the mitigation and adaptation mechanisms proposed by the Paris Agreement as well as by other international, national and local frameworks for addressing climate change are. Similarly, it is clear that climate change has not been caused by all the parties to the Convention equally and, conversely, that its impacts will not be felt across the planet uniformly. Historically, industrialised countries have developed by implementing an economic model which has disproportionately exploited the Earth’s resources and exacerbated socio-economic inequality across scales (Harvey, 2003). Meanwhile, evidence indicates that the less-industrialised countries feel more severely the detrimental effects of this development model and the impacts of climate change that it has produced (Mikulewicz, 2018; Niang et al., 2014; Shrestha, 2013; Thomas and Twyman, 2005). The face of this climate injustice have often been those who are in the frontline of climate-related impacts – the poorest and most marginalised in both the Global North and the Global South, who frequently lack access to the economic, social and political structures necessary to ensure that their views are recognised, their interests represented and their needs addressed (Tagg and Jafry, 2018). With climate change signifying a large-scale redistribution of both power and resources (Marino and Ribot, 2012), the potential for growing inequality resulting from climate change and from the ways in which we respond to it has become an important strand of critical climate change research. These complex and intractable questions of equity and fairness have given rise to the highly diverse – and by many seen as controversial – field of climate justice, which explicitly recognises that these “climate inequalities” exist and need to be confronted (Goodman, 2009; Meikle et al., 2016; Thorp, 2014). But this has also led to questions about what climate justice actually means given its diverse nature, and how it can be achieved, if at all.

Definitions and “images” of climate justice

The term “climate justice” began to gain traction in the late 1990s following a wide range of activities by social and environmental justice movements that emerged in response to the operations of the fossil fuel industry and, later, to what their members saw as the failed global climate governance model that became so transparent in 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen (Bruno et al., 1999; Schlosberg and Collins, 2014). But the prominence of climate justice has also been fuelled by the growing consensus among critical observers that technological innovation alone has proved insufficient to address the stratifying nature of climate-related challenges, including limited and increasingly unequal access to food, water and energy. These issues call for new approaches and methods to address the inequitable nature of climate change and its impacts. And while perspectives on what climate justice actually means and how it can be achieved vary greatly even within this volume, its editors and authors agree that climate justice, through its inherent concern for fairness and equity in the context of climate change, provides a robust lens through which to chart this uneven climate change terrain.

Over the last decade, however, the field has seen rapid growth into a wide range of disciplines, a trend we sought to reflect in this Handbook. Climate justice means different things to different people and, to complicate matters further, different things to the same people depending on a particular time and space (Thorp, 2014). The term is articulated differently by social movements, NGOs, academics and policymakers (Schlosberg and Collins, 2014). Recognising this conceptual and contextual diversity, Glasgow Caledonian University’s Centre for Climate Justice conducted a thorough review of climate justice definitions (Meikle et al., 2016). Through this exploratory process, a range of current approaches to climate justice were identified and reflected on. These centre on:

• A vision to dissolve and alleviate the unequal burdens created by climate change.
• A commitment to address the disproportionate burden of the climate crisis on the poor and marginalised.
• The recognition that the most vulnerable are the most deserving.
• Triple inequality – responsibility, vulnerability and mitigation.
• Dismantling the fossil fuel corporate power structure.
• A commitment to reparations and fair distribution of the world’s wealth.
• A way to encapsulate the equity aspects of climate change.
• An effort to redress global warming by reducing disparities in development and power structures that drive climate change and continued injustice.
• A human rights-based approach to climate justice safeguarding the rights of the most vulnerable affected by climate change.
• Looking at environmental and human impacts of climate change through the lens of social justice, human rights and concern for indigenous peoples.

Reflecting on the multitude of existing approaches, the Centre has concluded that, in its various forms, climate justice “recognises humanity’s responsibility for the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the poorest and most vulnerable people in society by critically addressing inequality and promoting transformative approaches to address the root causes of climate change” (Meikle et al., 2016, p. 497). Thus, despite the heterogeneity of climate justice perspectives, these have (at least) one thing in common: the focus on the equity and justice aspects inherent to both the causes and the effects of climate change. The “root causes” mentioned previously refer to greenhouse gas emissions caused by the traditional economic growth model, with a concomitant understanding that poverty and power imbalances act as “multipliers” for the negative impacts of climate change (Meikle et al., 2016).

The term continues to gain momentum in discussions around sustainable development, climate change, mitigation and adaptation, and has been slowly making its way into the world of international and national policy. However, progress in this arena could be much faster. Indeed, a critique often lodged against climate justice centres on its anti-establishment roots (Heffron and McCauley, 2018). The politically disruptive nature of the discourse often employed by climate activists has the (perhaps unintended) consequence of being perceived as divisive by those in power. Indeed, the framing of climate change as a rights or (in)justice issue affecting people and their environments (often personified by Mother Nature), and the emphasis on the uneven nature of the global economic, social and political system seem to have little traction among decision-makers. Similarly, the focus on historical responsibility and how the resource footprint, overconsumption and fossil fuel dependence of the Global North has caused the people living in the Global South to become recipients of externalised environmental costs as “social sinks” (Pettit, 2004, p. 102) seem to evoke a scant policy response. At the level of international negotiations, as demonstrated by one of the chapters in this Handbook for instance, repayment of the “climate debt” by the wealthy nations of the North for the damage done in the South is seen as a non-starter among most high-level climate negotiators.

Given these issues, there are voices asking if leading developed and developing countries to wrangle in this way undermines international solidarity, on which, after all, the Paris Agreement is arguably predicated. Yet at the same time, climate justice has become a focal point for organ-isation for indigenous peoples and marginalised communities around the world, as some of the chapters in this volume will demonstrate. Seen from this perspective, it can be argued that climate justice unites and empowers rather than divides.

And there are many more contentious questions for the field. For example, in moving towards a world beyond fossil fuels, can we also transition to a world beyond the injustices that have accompanied the fossil fuel economy? Can or should we see this as an opportunity to redefine the direction of “development” whereby human rights and the environment take precedence over economic growth? Indeed, one of the key questions that emerged during the compilation of this Handbook is the extent to which climate justice can be achieved within the current economic system and its governance structures. For instance, do we need global corporations, with all the power they yield, to be on board to ensure a swift and efficient transfer of finance, capacity and support, or is it necessary to reject those very structures and systems? Or, will compensation for the removal of historical responsibility rebalance inequalities? And can we ensure that it does not reward elites but actually reaches those who need it the most?

Thus, given these issues of definition, “images,” and practical applications of climate justice, what lies ahead for the field? Should it abandon its undisputedly anti-establishment heritage to become more broadly acceptable in the world of politics and policy? In other words, should the concept head in the direction of praxis by being strategically translated into climate policies and governance procedures? Indeed, can climate justice even be operationalised, and if so, how? Or, should the term remain circumscribed to the world of social activism and academia as a rallying call for social mobilisation and research, leaving the sphere of climate policy and development practice to more “apolitical” concepts such as resilience or risk management? This Handbook does not attempt to directly answer these difficult questions, but illustrates arguments on both sides, highlighting the contentious nature of climate justice.

Rationale and contents of the handbook

Since the 1990s, a number of authors have written about various aspects of climate justice. However, the connections between these remain unestablished – a conceptual diversity that is often used to critique the term (see Heffron and McCauley, 2018; Jenkins, 2018). The application of climate justice to topics such as finance, business, just transition, development policy, urban environments, gender or natural resource management remains ambiguous. Moreover, over the years, the field has seen an interesting migration across scales. Despite having emerged from within environmental justice movements at the local level, the bulk of climate justice research and activism has historically been concerned with the international level of climate governance (Fisher, 2015). However, this has been changing over the last ten or so years, and this Handbook mirrors this change. A significant number of the chapters presented here are about local places and local people – cities, neighbourhoods and communities – and as such they address scales at which tangible climate injustice is actually felt. In a similar vein, this volume includes chapters focusing on both developed and developing countries, as it should not be forgotten that while the North-South division seems perhaps the most striking when looking at the global scale, there also exist significant social, economic and political inequalities within both camps that can be further exacerbated by climate change impacts.

With this fluidity and diversity that characterises climate justice in mind, a more comprehensive and integrated reference compendium in the subject area was needed for students, academics, professionals and practitioners to explain in more detail what the concept offers and what its various applications may be. This Handbook equips readers with information necessa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: justice in the era of climate change
• PART I Theories of climate justice
• PART II Climate justice governance, policy and litigation
• PART III Climate justice, finance and business
• PART IV Just transition
• PART V Urban Climate Justice
• PART VI Climate Justice and Gender
• PART VII Climate justice movements and struggles
• PART VIII Emerging areas in climate justice
• Index