Insights from the Global South Climate justice: The intersection of economics, the environment, and inequality

Highlights

• Human-made climate change threatens the existence of human societies and economies.
• The responsibility for causing climate change and the capacity to deal with it varies widely between high- and low-income countries and across social groups.
• Appeals for climate justice emphasize that the responsibilities for and impacts of climate change are not distributed equally. Vulnerable and marginalized communities often bear a disproportionate burden of the consequences and lack the power to determine solutions.
• Addressing climate change requires both mitigation policies to reduce emissions, such as carbon pricing mechanisms, and adaptation policies to help society adjust to actual or expected disruptions. Using the principles of climate justice, policymakers need to consider two dimensions of fairness: intergenerational (current vs future generations) and intragenerational (social groups within the same generation).
• Climate justice encompasses the idea of climate-resilient development (CRD). Societal choices in shaping pathways towards a sustainable future and the need for system transitions to implement mitigation and adaptation measures are both important in order to achieve CRD.
• Since the 1990s, global negotiations to address climate change, such as the Paris Agreement, have focused on reducing emissions and financing adaptation and mitigation measures. While many countries have made formal agreements or commitments to addressing climate change, actual progress in achieving emission reductions or providing sufficient support for vulnerable countries has been limited.