2.5: Policy Alternatives, Alternative Visions- What Might Climate Justice Look Like?

Addressing climate debt and ecological debt

According to an Ecuadorian nongovernmental organization, Acción Ecológica, ecological debt is “the debt accumulated by Northern, industrial countries toward Third World countries on account of resource plundering, environmental damages, and the free occupation of environmental space to deposit wastes, such as greenhouse gases, from the industrial countries.” One of the leading scholars in the field of ecological debt studies, Joan Martinez-Alier, calculates ecological debt by drawing on many variables, such as

nutrients in exports including virtual water, the oil and minerals no longer available, the biodiversity destroyed, sulfur dioxide emitted by copper smelters, the mine tailings, the harms to health from flower exports, the pollution of water by mining, the commercial use of information and knowledge on genetic resources, when they have been appropriated gratis (“biopiracy”), and agricultural genetic resources.

While each of these examples involves the withdrawal of key ecological resources from the global South to the global North, Martinez-Alier shows that wealthy nations and corporations have also brought numerous threats into local environments in the South, including tons of hazardous chemical wastes.

About a study of global ecological debt that he led, economist Richard Norgaard said, “At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor, and, in effect, there is a debt to the poor.” Nongovernmental organizations across Africa and the global South—including Jubilee South, the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, the African Peoples Movement on Climate Change, the World Council of Churches, Action Aid, Africa Action, and the Third World Network—endorse repayment of ecological debt. Moreover, the World Bank acknowledges the problem of ecological debt and its continuing and highly unequal effects on the gross domestic product of various nations.

Climate debt is a specific type of ecological debt and is best summed up in the UNFCCC’s own words: “The largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries ... [and should be redressed] on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities.” Many scholars and observers believe that addressing climate debt through global North nations’ allocation of funds to the South is a path far superior to carbon trading.

Progressive financing of climate debt would involve transferring considerable resources to the South to account for the historic excessive harm that wealthy nations have visited upon the global climate and for future ecological-social crises that will likely unfold in the South. Coalitions like La Via Campesina have demanded of the UNFCCC that 6% of Annex 1 nations’ gross domestic product be allocated to finance actions to mitigate the climate crisis in global South countries. On this topic, Pablo Solón, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, stated, “We are not assigning guilt, merely responsibility. As they say in the US, if you break it, you buy it.”

The debate over market-based solutions

For many global South activists, the explicit commitment to economic growth in major policy debates around climate disruption is not useful. Growth of the global economy means the production and consumption of an ever-increasing amount of goods, using an ever-increasing amount of energy, mineral, agricultural, and forest resources. For these critics, replacing “growth” as the main objective of the economy is a fundamental change that must be made to address climate disruption. The challenge ahead is to build a new paradigm rooted in meeting human needs equitably and sustainably.

Regarding the growth imperative in climate policy, Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said:

The climate crisis is rooted in a political and cultural system dedicated to economic growth at any cost. Ideas and actions around the climate crisis must include a complete transformation away from the dominant economic model of incessant and unsustainable growth, and social oppression and injustice.... Indigenous peoples’ cosmovision and our worldview are concerned of a world that privatizes the air, water and commodifies the sacredness of Mother Earth. We must de-colonize the atmosphere.

After the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 16) in Cancun in 2010, the global coalition La Via Campesina declared, “Stop the tendency to convert the grave problems of the climate crisis into business opportunities.... Earth cannot be sold!”

There’s another way to think about this. To meet the challenges of the climate crisis, we must make consistent, dramatic, and immediate reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. If those needs are clear, then why would we put so much of our effort into a system that is inherently volatile and has never produced consistent, sustainable, and dramatic gains over time?

For some global South communities, the market-based approach is a significant obstacle to achieving solutions to the climate crisis. These groups oppose the dominant policy and cultural framework for addressing climate change, which suggests that the best way to save the planet from ecological peril is to ensure that someone can make a profit while doing it. This logic views ecosystems as commodities and assumes that we will truly value things only if they have a price tag on them. On one hand, that means that everything can be sold, even if it has great cultural, intrinsic, and ecological value to someone who does not want it to be sold. On the other hand, it means that places and things with rich cultural value can be ignored or destroyed if they do not also enjoy high market value.

Many activists in the global South see this kind of unsustainable thinking at the core of market logic. If everything only has a value in terms of global markets, then what is most important and dear to local communities matters much less. This is one of the many problems with cap and trade, CDM, and REDD. These policies are implemented by officials, corporations, and governments that care not about what local people value, but only about national and international emissions targets appearing to be achieved. These policies run the risk of disempowering local communities and devaluing their ecosystems because they ignore local peoples’ needs.

Speaking to some of these concerns, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Acid Rain Program, established under the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, demonstrates how a market-based cap-and-trade program might achieve significant results. According to the Office of Management and Budget, this project has produced significant reductions in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants in the United States. Nationally prominent advocacy organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund support this particular project and the general market-based approach as well. Despite this project’s admirable success, it is fair to say that carbon is a far more complex substance to regulate than sulfur.

Many global South leaders believe that we sorely need to focus on protecting the various commons that we all depend on—the land, water, air, and climate systems that we share. Activists and organizations across the global South call for a post-petroleum and post-fossil fuel global economy and society that will produce dramatic, immediate, and sustainable reductions in carbon emissions.

Community-based social movement responses

Figure 2.5.1 These posters reflect the struggle for climate justice, underscoring links between social equality and environmental protection. 350.org, UC Davis, 2017. Reproduced from Flickr.

Community-based leaders across the global South insist that we focus on the root causes—social, environmental, political, and economic—of the climate crisis in order to move toward a total systemic transformation of our societies. There are numerous exciting proposals and visions for how to move toward climate justice from scholars and advocates from around the world. The following are just a select few:

• We need to redefine economic growth. A new paradigm is needed, one that is rooted in meeting human needs equitably and sustainably.
• The long-standing and dominant commitment to infinite economic growth in major climate policy debates is downright destructive.
• We need to shift from export-led development policies and practices in the global South to supporting locally sustainable economies everywhere.
• Wealthy nations of the global North must also learn to consume less and achieve dramatic reductions in carbon emissions without offsetting schemes.
• We should reexamine global trade and investment rules that encourage energy-intensive industries that have been proven harmful to ecosystems and the climate.
• Many observers believe that the United States should launch a Green New Deal that would feature a carbon tax on the biggest industrial polluters, phase out subsidies to high-emissions industries, and promote increases in public funding for clean technology, renewable energy, public transport, and energy efficiency. All of this would improve job creation (Figure 2.5.1).

Those are some examples of proposals for climate justice. The following are some instances of actual documents that leaders from the climate justice movement and governments have authored to inspire people, organizations, and policymakers to implement these kinds of changes.

The Bali Principles

In 2002, an international coalition of nongovernmental organizations drafted and released the Bali Principles of Climate Justice, which seek to redefine climate change from a human rights and environmental justice perspective. While covering an ambitious range of topics, these principles make clear that, for many people, the climate issue is a matter of life and death and that perhaps its gravest injustice is that those who suffer the greatest harm are the least responsible for contributing to the problem. The principles consider the causes of climate change and offer a far-reaching vision for solutions.

For example, Principle 24 states: “Climate Justice opposes military action, occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, water, oceans, peoples and cultures, and other life forms, especially as it relates to the fossil fuel industry’s role in this respect.” It is well known but rarely stated publicly that military organizations and practices require massive fossil fuel production and constitute one of the greatest global threats to ecological sustainability.

The Bali Principles suggest that any move forward in global climate policy must be inclusive of all peoples, especially persons from those communities most affected by climate disruption. Principle 12, for example, states: “Climate Justice affirms the right of all people, including the poor, women, rural and indigenous peoples, to have access to affordable and sustainable energy.” According to Principle 20, “Climate Justice recognizes the right to self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, and their right to control their lands, including sub-surface land, territories and resources and the right to the protection against any action or conduct that may result in the destruction or degradation of their territories and cultural way of life.”

Finally, Principle 11 calls for new ways of producing energy that are sustainable and fair: “Climate Justice calls for clean, renewable, locally controlled and low-impact energy resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for all living things.”

Grassroots global South networks have argued that successes are occurring in the struggle for climate justice in local communities around the globe where activists are building movements and power for broader democratic change. Such efforts have prevented major new industrial carbon emissions by stopping incineration projects, hydropower projects, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, and offshore drilling expansion plans. These groups have also embraced efforts to decommission carbon markets and promote massive investments in renewable energy, public transportation, urban agriculture, and green jobs.

The rights of Mother Earth

Indigenous rights and environmental justice activists argue that we need to expand the concept of rights to include nonhuman nature. Their central premise is that ecosystems have inherent value and worth—like humans, they have a right to exist. These emerging concepts of environmental citizenship decenter human beings and expand the categories of “person” and “citizen” themselves.

The draft Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, developed at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, is an international framework to ensure a mechanism for the recognition of human rights and for the rights of Mother Earth, or Pachamama. An estimated 35,000 participants from all over the world attended this gathering to urge governments to grant enduring and permanent rights to the Earth, while claiming that such a practice will improve efforts to ensure the rights of the globe’s most vulnerable peoples.

In 2008, Ecuador announced a revised constitution that affords the Earth and nature constitutional rights. One passage states that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” The Pennsylvania based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund assisted Ecuador with the revisions to its constitution and has helped draft similar laws in several states in the US as well. Its aim in this regard is to create legal systems “that change the status of ecosystems from being regarded as property under the law to being recognized as rights-bearing entities.”

Taking all of the above ideas into account, we can return to the question, What might climate justice look like?

• Any effort at achieving climate justice will have to focus on the root social, ecological, political, and economic causes of the climate crisis.
• Systemic transformations are needed—hence the slogan “System change not climate change.”
• Solutions rooted in practices that produced the problem make little sense. In particular, market-based solutions must be reevaluated since pro-growth policies led us down the path toward climate disruption in the first place.
• Community action at the local level works to build political power, to reduce and prevent carbon emissions, and to promote sustainability.