Why Climate Justice Matters

Climate change is the result of decades of high-emission industrialisation. This activity led to the development of some nations, but not all. Similarly, the impacts of climate change are not proportionally distributed; some parts of the world experience larger climate related hazards than others. Climate justice seeks to solve the climate problem while addressing these inequalities.

In this video, Mohamed Adow, Guest Expert on the Business and Climate Change: Towards Net Zero Emissions online short course from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) discusses the importance of climate justice.

Transcript

Climate justice is simply the idea that people who have caused and profited from creating the climate crisis through carbon-heavy industrialisation, should do their fair share to tackle the problem and also use part of their wealth to make amends. This is through reducing their own emissions, which have caused the problem in the first place, and also financially helping the victims of climate change by helping them to transition to zero carbon pathway, to adapt to the impact of climate change, but also to compensate for the losses which cannot be adapted to.

For example, Africa has 17 per cent of the world’s population, but we Africans only contribute 4 per cent of the global emissions that have brought misery and destruction through climate change. Not only are we not responsible, but Africa suffers disproportionately from the impact of climate change through severe drought and storms like Cyclone Idai that killed more than 1,300 people in Southern Africa in 2019. Sadly, the same is true for the citizens of low-lying island states in the Pacific and flood victims in coastal Bangladesh.

Climate justice is about righting this wrong. Climate justice allows us to talk about the solution, and it allows us to talk about inequality, vulnerability, and issues like energy access and poverty eradication.

The reason we need to understand the impact on the vulnerable is so that we understand the true nature of the problem, and can then adapt our policies and behaviours accordingly to protect them. We know that climate change will strike everyone if left unchecked. We should care about the climate-vulnerable, because of the moral imperative to care for those most in need, but people in the rich world, including the UK for example, should also do it out of self-interest.

It’s also what we should do if we want a well-functioning international order. Ignoring the plight of the vulnerable on such a global scale will lead to a breakdown in international relations. A lot of the poor countries and communities don’t necessarily have the clean technology that will facilitate and accelerate that transition to a low carbon or zero carbon future.

Access to clean technology, and having an intellectual property rights regime that allows for free transfer and development of those technologies in all countries equally, will actually help facilitate the transition.