SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
Climate justice in lieu of climate change: a sustainable approach
to respond to the climate change injustice and an awakening
of the environmental movement
Chitresh Saraswat1 • Pankaj Kumar1
1 Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), United Nations University, 5-53-70, Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo 150-8925, Japan
Received: 15 September 2015 / Revised: 9 October 2015 / Accepted: 30 October 2015 / Published online: 15 February 2016
Joint Center on Global Change and Earth System Science of the University of Maryland and Beijing Normal University and Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract The climate justice is the concept of ensuring fair
treatment and freedom from any kind of discrimination
against the negative impacts of climate change. Both individually and collectively, in the form of adaptation and mitigation strategies, we are building our capacity to respond to
the climate change, but the dimensions of environmental
justice, equal treatment in the policy making and even the
clear definition of vulnerable groups are often neglected. The
climate justice is an evidence-based response to the environmental injustice and helpful in creation of fair policies and
strategies to address the impacts of global warming by
empowering the vulnerable groups with required legal
resources, provision to ensuring necessary funding and
capability to deal existing discrimination in the society. Historically, the journey of climate justice had begun with its
recognition by the international bodies and legal frameworks.
In the year 1992, United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Changeinsistedthe member states to worktogetherto
reduce the greenhouse gases emission and also emphasized on
the equity dimension of climate justice by mentioning the
‘common but differentiated responsibility’ in the charter. It
specifies the need of proactive participation of the developed
countries to resolve the issue of global warming, which was
fueled by their ambitions, and they should help the developing
countries with technological advances and finance to respond
to climate change. The dimension of climate justice for the
individuals and the vulnerable groups is to achieve a fair,
equitable and sustainable legal solution to deal with the
existing injustice in the society. It is a new kind of environmental movement, which is advocating for achieving a
socially responsible, scientifically sound and economically
fairly distributed legal framework. Climate justice offers a fair
treatment and equal platform to deal with the inconsistencies
in the recognition of different vulnerable groups and lack of
opportunities for involving in decision-making system. The
paper discusses the sustainable approach to respond to the
climate injustice, where the vulnerable groups, disadvantaged
individuals and the least developed states, who contributed
least in global warming, but likely to be most affected by its
impacts. The paper explores the current research gaps and
recommends the policies to prepare climate justice legal
framework.
Keywords Climate change Climate justice Vulnerable
groups Climate vulnerability Climate justice legal
framework
1 Background
The climate justice is an environmental movement ensuring
the social, ecological and economical justice for everyone,
who contributed the least in causing of global warming, but
is likely to be the most affected by it. The question arises that
who should pay the price of consequences of the global
warming (Aylett 2010) and how to ensure the equal treatment in policy making, inclusivity of all vulnerable groups
and fair distribution of resources to respond to the impact of
climate change. The answer is climate justice framework,
and its first success is in acknowledging the existing injustice toward those who contributed the least in the causing, as
well as in safeguarding their rights with strong evidencebased policy framework. For example, the vulnerable
& Pankaj Kumar
[email protected]
123
Energ. Ecol. Environ. (2016) 1(2):67–74
DOI 10.1007/s40974-015-0001-8
