Massive climate-driven disasters in South Asia, East Africa, and elsewhere have put a spotlight on the needs of the world’s “climate-vulnerable.” But whether climate justice will be served very much remains to be seen.
PS Quarterly regularly features predictions from leading thinkers and uniquely positioned commentators on a topic of global concern. After a brutal summer of extreme climate-driven events, food and energy crises, tightening global financial conditions, and warnings of looming debt troubles in low- and middle-income countries, this issue’s contributors responded to the following proposition:
“Major global developments in the run-up to COP27 have made it even more difficult to secure ‘climate justice’ for the developing world. Agree or disagree, and why?”
Many of the forces that have fueled climate change have also contributed to rampant human-rights violations, extreme poverty, and political gridlock. As a result, countries that lack the capacity to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis – like the Philippines – have already lost more than others might realize.
Some of these losses are economic, such as the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and other public infrastructure. But other losses cannot be monetized or traded in the climate markets. Among these are the loss of ancestral lands, natural resources, cultural heritage, Indigenous knowledge, and traditional ways of life.
Since these losses are irreversible, securing climate justice for the developing world cannot be achieved simply by minimizing future damage (and certainly not by making empty promises). Calls to uphold, respect, and fulfill human rights cannot be separated from appeals for climate justice. In the upcoming negotiations at COP27, you can bet that there will be demands on rich countries to cut their emissions and provide reparations for loss and damage not just in the developing world but also at home.
The 2022 climate agenda needs a lifeline. From the US Supreme Court’s decision restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to mandate carbon-emissions reductions, to the European Union adopting a sustainable-finance taxonomy that risks opening the door for greenwashing, there is an urgent need for more trust, transparency, and cooperation.
My deepest concern is that short-termism is undermining the Glasgow Pact that was agreed at COP26 last year. Attention has shifted to crises that require immediate, systemic responses, from the war on Ukraine and global inflation to dangerous levels of food insecurity and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But progress on climate change need not become a casualty of the current geopolitical situation. In fact, today’s challenges can all be viewed through a climate lens. The climate agenda – and particularly demands for climate justice – is too urgent to be paused or discounted.
Much now depends on whether the international community can seize the remaining key moments ahead of COP27 (particularly the United Nations General Assembly and the fall meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) to refocus its efforts. Making a success of COP27 means going beyond the Petersburg Climate Dialogue in July to lock in implementation plans for emissions reductions.
To preserve the lives and livelihoods of those least responsible for the climate crisis, wealthy countries and big emitters must rapidly scale up their climate adaptation-financing commitments and provide more reliable access to urgently needed resources. Although we are currently off course, there is still time to act decisively, both keeping alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C and furnishing concrete financial support for adaptation and loss and damage.
Climate change is loading nature’s dice against us, making many of our weather extremes more frequent, more severe, and more dangerous. In this year alone, we have seen it fuel record-breaking heat waves from India to the UK and catastrophic flooding from Kentucky to South Africa to Brazil.
These changes affect us all, but they don’t affect us all equally. From low-income communities in large urban centers like Houston and London to subsistence farmers in Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest and most marginalized bear the biggest costs. And the more the climate changes, the more difficult it becomes to secure climate justice for those who are suffering despite having contributed virtually nothing to global emissions.
Here’s the good news. Just as the effects of climate change disproportionately fall on those who have the least, many of the solutions can benefit those same communities immensely. If deployed, we can expect clean energy, regenerative agricultural practices, investments in climate resilience, and nature-based solutions to improve human health and welfare, secure water and food resources, and protect communities and ecosystems.
A thriving future is possible, however, only if these communities are empowered to shape their own decisions. That is why it is essential to support their visions, learn from their experiences, and amplify their leadership – both at COP27 and beyond.
On one hand, the rise of authoritarian governments makes everything more difficult, because it diminishes people’s ability to act on their desires for a better world. But with the US Congress poised (at the time of this writing) to enact serious climate legislation for the first time, there is at least a chance to begin rallying more and more people to the work that must be done.
That work, crucially, includes serving climate justice. The Global North has promised hundreds of billions of dollars that it hasn’t provided. With Russia’s war in Ukraine and a global economic malaise setting in, mustering those funds now may prove difficult. Yet the task remains essential, which is why civil society is more focused on it than ever before. Expect “loss and damage” to be the watchwords of COP27.
From the very beginning of my advocacy efforts, I have always referred to climate change as the greatest moral challenge to face humanity. Apart from being an issue that demands scientific attention, it is the biggest disaster that humans have ever caused. The latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that most of the Pacific Island countries will not be inhabitable beyond 2050. And elsewhere around the world, the problem has taken the form of heat waves, wildfires, unprecedentedly severe storms, and faster-melting ice caps and glaciers. All point to the growing instability of our planetary systems.
The developed world is not only most responsible for the climate crisis; it also has the greatest capacity to reduce emissions. Yet despite the science and the increasing severity of recent adverse global events, rich countries have been unwilling to agree on the measures needed to avert the catastrophe that the IPCC describes.
As the most vulnerable to climate change, the Pacific Island countries – whose very existence is on the line – have been advocating effective and urgent action. Unfortunately, the ambitious but feasible targets set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement have not been achieved, and they will remain unrealized now that the pandemic and the conflict in Europe has put more pressure on the world’s economies.
Humanity’s future thus looks bleak, not least for those of us on low-lying islands. It seems unlikely that the countries and the corporations with the power to change the course of events will rise to the moral challenge of our time. But unless they do, what can COP27 hope to achieve?
PS Quarterly regularly features predictions from leading thinkers and uniquely positioned commentators on a topic of global concern. After a brutal summer of extreme climate-driven events, food and energy crises, tightening global financial conditions, and warnings of looming debt troubles in low- and middle-income countries, this issue’s contributors responded to the following proposition:
“Major global developments in the run-up to COP27 have made it even more difficult to secure ‘climate justice’ for the developing world. Agree or disagree, and why?”
Alab Mirasol Ayroso
Many of the forces that have fueled climate change have also contributed to rampant human-rights violations, extreme poverty, and political gridlock. As a result, countries that lack the capacity to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis – like the Philippines – have already lost more than others might realize.
Some of these losses are economic, such as the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and other public infrastructure. But other losses cannot be monetized or traded in the climate markets. Among these are the loss of ancestral lands, natural resources, cultural heritage, Indigenous knowledge, and traditional ways of life.
Since these losses are irreversible, securing climate justice for the developing world cannot be achieved simply by minimizing future damage (and certainly not by making empty promises). Calls to uphold, respect, and fulfill human rights cannot be separated from appeals for climate justice. In the upcoming negotiations at COP27, you can bet that there will be demands on rich countries to cut their emissions and provide reparations for loss and damage not just in the developing world but also at home.
Yamide Dagnet
The 2022 climate agenda needs a lifeline. From the US Supreme Court’s decision restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to mandate carbon-emissions reductions, to the European Union adopting a sustainable-finance taxonomy that risks opening the door for greenwashing, there is an urgent need for more trust, transparency, and cooperation.
My deepest concern is that short-termism is undermining the Glasgow Pact that was agreed at COP26 last year. Attention has shifted to crises that require immediate, systemic responses, from the war on Ukraine and global inflation to dangerous levels of food insecurity and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But progress on climate change need not become a casualty of the current geopolitical situation. In fact, today’s challenges can all be viewed through a climate lens. The climate agenda – and particularly demands for climate justice – is too urgent to be paused or discounted.
Much now depends on whether the international community can seize the remaining key moments ahead of COP27 (particularly the United Nations General Assembly and the fall meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank) to refocus its efforts. Making a success of COP27 means going beyond the Petersburg Climate Dialogue in July to lock in implementation plans for emissions reductions.
To preserve the lives and livelihoods of those least responsible for the climate crisis, wealthy countries and big emitters must rapidly scale up their climate adaptation-financing commitments and provide more reliable access to urgently needed resources. Although we are currently off course, there is still time to act decisively, both keeping alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C and furnishing concrete financial support for adaptation and loss and damage.
Katharine Hayhoe
Climate change is loading nature’s dice against us, making many of our weather extremes more frequent, more severe, and more dangerous. In this year alone, we have seen it fuel record-breaking heat waves from India to the UK and catastrophic flooding from Kentucky to South Africa to Brazil.
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These changes affect us all, but they don’t affect us all equally. From low-income communities in large urban centers like Houston and London to subsistence farmers in Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest and most marginalized bear the biggest costs. And the more the climate changes, the more difficult it becomes to secure climate justice for those who are suffering despite having contributed virtually nothing to global emissions.
Here’s the good news. Just as the effects of climate change disproportionately fall on those who have the least, many of the solutions can benefit those same communities immensely. If deployed, we can expect clean energy, regenerative agricultural practices, investments in climate resilience, and nature-based solutions to improve human health and welfare, secure water and food resources, and protect communities and ecosystems.
A thriving future is possible, however, only if these communities are empowered to shape their own decisions. That is why it is essential to support their visions, learn from their experiences, and amplify their leadership – both at COP27 and beyond.
Bill McKibben
On one hand, the rise of authoritarian governments makes everything more difficult, because it diminishes people’s ability to act on their desires for a better world. But with the US Congress poised (at the time of this writing) to enact serious climate legislation for the first time, there is at least a chance to begin rallying more and more people to the work that must be done.
That work, crucially, includes serving climate justice. The Global North has promised hundreds of billions of dollars that it hasn’t provided. With Russia’s war in Ukraine and a global economic malaise setting in, mustering those funds now may prove difficult. Yet the task remains essential, which is why civil society is more focused on it than ever before. Expect “loss and damage” to be the watchwords of COP27.
Anote Tong
From the very beginning of my advocacy efforts, I have always referred to climate change as the greatest moral challenge to face humanity. Apart from being an issue that demands scientific attention, it is the biggest disaster that humans have ever caused. The latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that most of the Pacific Island countries will not be inhabitable beyond 2050. And elsewhere around the world, the problem has taken the form of heat waves, wildfires, unprecedentedly severe storms, and faster-melting ice caps and glaciers. All point to the growing instability of our planetary systems.
The developed world is not only most responsible for the climate crisis; it also has the greatest capacity to reduce emissions. Yet despite the science and the increasing severity of recent adverse global events, rich countries have been unwilling to agree on the measures needed to avert the catastrophe that the IPCC describes.
As the most vulnerable to climate change, the Pacific Island countries – whose very existence is on the line – have been advocating effective and urgent action. Unfortunately, the ambitious but feasible targets set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement have not been achieved, and they will remain unrealized now that the pandemic and the conflict in Europe has put more pressure on the world’s economies.
Humanity’s future thus looks bleak, not least for those of us on low-lying islands. It seems unlikely that the countries and the corporations with the power to change the course of events will rise to the moral challenge of our time. But unless they do, what can COP27 hope to achieve?