What is climate justice?
Climate justice applies the principles of social justice to climate issues, conceptualising climate change as fundamentally a social justice issue. Climate injustice describes the disproportionate burden of environmental degradation placed on marginalised and low-income communities, who are conversely least responsible for carbon emissions and environmentally destructive practices. The effects of this cause a multitude of detrimental social, economic, health, and other impacts on vulnerable communities, exacerbating existing inequalities (Greenpeace, 2023).
This approach conceptualises the climate crisis as both social and environmental. Highlighting systemic issues that drive climate change, this understanding identifies climate change as a symptom of unfair and unrepresentative economic, social and political institutions. In turn, climate justice seeks to create solutions that both reduce emissions and introduce a more equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of climate action, creating a fairer society in the process (Friends of the Earth, 2024; Climate Just, 2024).
Positioning the climate crisis as a systemic issue intricately connected to social injustice is key to recognising the potential benefits of climate action designed with climate justice in mind, facilitating positive outcomes for environmental, social, and economic wellbeing.
How does this relate to other sustainable practices?
This approach of relating broader themes of social justice to climate change is also applicable to other systems placing disproportionate negative impacts on the UK and its marginalised populations. Food justice and energy justice are similar concepts tied to issues of food insecurity and energy poverty respectively, the causes and impacts of which are exacerbated and intensified by climate change and vice versa.
Find out more
https://www.climatejust.org.uk/what-climate-justice
https://groups.friendsoftheearth.uk/resources/whats-climate-justice
https://groups.friendsoftheearth.uk/resources/your-guide-climate-justice