365 Days of Climate Awareness 230 – Introduction to Climate Justice

In this series I have focused mostly on the physical aspects of climate change: the drivers, the mechanisms, the results. Implied has been much of the human impact, when I’ve referenced sea level rise in the islands, or increasingly erratic behavior of the jet stream, or otherwise. But society and economies are major aspects of this entire saga, both as cause and recipient. As an oceanographer and geologist, I have kept my focus mostly on the environment, veering now and then, only tentatively, into the world of economics or policy. I try to abide by Twain’s point about not revealing myself to be a fool.

Bangladesh: current, and with modeled 1- and 1.5-meter sea level rise.

But a look throughout the entire world at the impacts of global warming brings us very quickly to the concept of climate justice. My definition of “climate justice” is the balance of human rights against political and economic factors in climate change. As we tour the world and look at nations which are smaller, less wealthy, and physically more vulnerable to changes in climate, the injustice is obvious right away.

Per Capital Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Country, 2018

Tiny island nations like Kiribati or the Maldives, or even significantly larger ones like the Philippines, have gladly piggybacked on the world’s economic expansion, while not being main drivers of the expansion. And their relative lack of wealth and their physical situations leave them disproportionately exposed to global warming threats. Another example is Bangladesh, population 163 million, one of the poorer nations on earth, with rising sea levels and increasingly severe flooding. It stands to lose 10% of its land area with 1 m in sea level rise. It is a prime case of a poor country likely to produce large numbers of climate refugees.

Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Country, 2018

The practice of climate justice is to balance the responsibility for climate change with its impacts. Industrial leaders, with the highest aggregate, annual and per-capita greenhouse gas emissions, bear the greatest responsibility for this climate calamity. But while global warming impacts all countries, it doesn’t do so evenly. Smaller nations, those largely not responsible for creating the crisis, are much more easily destabilized by it. Any system of justice would address that disparity.

Total Historical Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Country, 1850-2021

There is at present little or no recourse. Last fall’s COP-26 in Glasgow, where the oil industry was better represented than any country, was the best chance of countries impacted by climate change to gain even non-binding pledges of action. They came away largely empty. The International Court of Justice, even when it rules on cases involving climate change, cannot compel any judgments. Simply put, small and lightly developed countries have little power over their futures with regard to the climate.

This brings us back for the present to Africa, where large numbers of people live on subsistence means, with agriculture vulnerable to drought or extreme rain. Their survival is marginal compared to the populations in the industrial economies, and global warming is likely to disproportionately upset their economies and lifestyles. That aspect of global warming will now be included.

Tomorrow: major climate change impacts facing all of Africa.

Be brave, and be well.