What forms of justice matter as climate action ramps up?
Many dimensions of justice are relevant to climate change efforts; chief among these are the following three.
- Procedural justice emphasizes decision-making processes about climate impacts and actions that are inclusive, fair, accountable, and transparent, especially for groups that are most directly vulnerable to these impacts and actions.
- Distributive justice, essential to the loss and damage debates happening right now, is concerned with the outcomes and impacts of climate change and efforts to address it. Priority is placed on highlighting how different groups at local, national, or global levels benefit or suffer from the impacts of climate change and climate action, as well as who bears the responsibility for them.
- Transformative justice is based on the notion that vulnerability to climate change reflects various structural injustices in society, such as the exclusion of marginalized groups from decision-making and from alternative livelihood options that might build their resilience to climate change. From that standpoint, responses to climate change must take aim at these structural inequalities, reinforce democratic governance at all scales, and propel the realization of gender equality and social inclusion. This journal article in WIREs Climate Change explains the concept.
Transformative justice comes into sight when procedural and distributional justice are achieved. It requires a systems approach, which recognizes (i) the multiple and often overlapping societal responses to climate change that will occur at different places, times, and scales, but also (ii) the existing challenges of structural inequality and exclusions that will interact with climate responses.
Climate responses will play out through various institutions and governance processes and raise questions of procedural justice: who is in and who is out when decisions are made about climate action? Moreover, those governance processes hold the potential to level power imbalances and mediate the trade-offs in distributional climate justice debates — who benefits and who suffers. However, large-scale development and infrastructure projects are riddled with painful examples of causing harm to vulnerable groups, resulting in negative unintended consequences and creating or exacerbating injustice and inequalities. In an article in Nature Climate Change, authors Mary Robinson and Tara Shine have already drawn attention to the risks to human rights posed by well-intentioned, large-scale climate action interventions, like solar and wind farms or biofuel plantations.
IDRC joins the climate justice conversation and prioritizes Southern perspectives
Addressing climate change as an issue of justice is not business as usual. Applying a justice lens will require everyone to work differently. The challenge for the justice community will be to work simultaneously and more effectively across multiple scales of stakeholders and climate policy spaces, including national adaptation plans and nationally determined contributions. For the climate change community, it will be important to complement the customary focus on technical solutions with more attention on the meanings, applications, and pursuit of equality, fairness, and justice.
In that spirit, IDRC supports new research to begin generating some answers to the big questions about how to achieve transformative justice in a changing climate. We see research playing an important transformative role in tackling the root causes of inequality, especially when built around partnerships with non-academic partners, with a clear commitment to the co-production of knowledge (see diagram above). Watch for developments from this research, testing approaches to promote climate justice in Africa, Asia, and Latin America:
- Justice-informed adaption through Indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems in Chile and Peru. This action research is identifying strategies to connect with Indigenous peoples’ groups to integrate their perspectives on climate justice into national adaptation plans and related measures in Peru and Chile. The research complements the groups’ larger efforts to achieve inclusion, equality, and respect for their rights around climate action. It is led by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú (PUCP), in collaboration with the Universidad de Chile’s Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas and the Nature Conservancy in the United States. For more information, contact Maritza Paredes at PUCP.
- Just and resilient planned relocation from climate change in Bangladesh. This action research identifies strategies to support more just outcomes for vulnerable populations who may need to be relocated because of the impacts of climate change like rising coastal waters in Bangladesh. Led by the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, and the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, Bangladesh, the research takes advantage of a major window of opportunity to integrate questions of inclusion and rights into Bangladesh’s National Strategy on Planned Relocation from Climate Change. For more information, contact Dr Ricardo Safra de Campos at the University of Exeter.
- Brokering justice in a changing climate. The Climate Development Knowledge Network is supporting local groups and communities to effectively advocate for just and inclusive climate actions at the global level. The network builds on its existing knowledge brokering efforts for Southern-led climate research, linking up with an existing multi-national climate justice project called Amplifying Voices of Just Climate Action. For more information, contact Michelle Du Toit at SouthSouthNorth.
Given the increasing ambitions to act on the climate crisis, now is the time to mobilize research around climate justice. The challenge lies in forging new partnerships between those most affected by climate change and climate action, the justice community, and climate change researchers.
For further information about IDRC investments in climate justice research, contact Adrian Di Giovanni or Georgina Cundill-Kemp.
