At the moment all you hear of is ‘sustainable living’ this and ‘Greta Thunberg’ that - and everyone has their opinion. With such a varied and complicated issue as the climate crisis on everyone’s tongues, it is difficult to decide what should be done about what is inarguably the greatest issue of our time. The result of this is the hotly debated conversation of climate justice.
In the simplest of terms, ‘climate justice’ is a phrase used when framing global warming as an ethical or political issue that needs addressing, an understanding that without urgent action climate change will continue to increase rapidly. When discussing climate justice, we are acknowledging the responsibility of every member of the human race to the environment, though this responsibility may come at varying levels.
But what does climate justice look like? And how can we achieve it?
We can only truly understand what is meant by climate justice by recognising the victims of climate injustice. Often it is those who contribute to the climate crisis the least who suffer the most from environmental collapse. These are people in poor, vulnerable communities across the world, who depend on a stable climate to grow and harvest crops to sustain them financially, and also feed themselves until the next season. People who are unlikely to have received formal education, who do not understand the sudden unpredictability that they see in their harvest seasons. This affects their entire economy - harvest seasons become difficult to predict and produce is lost to sudden droughts or flooding. Not to mention that often these communities do not have the funds needed to rectify damage caused by climate change. At the time of writing this article, I had just had a conversation with my lecturer regarding Zimbabwe, where people are currently facing starvation due to droughts leaving behind a fruitless harvest season, on top of devastation caused by cyclone Idai in March of last year. As it stands, it is estimated that 8.5 million people (out of a population of 16.8 million people) are starving because the climate crisis has completely crippled their agricultural industry. Not only are they without food, but the country’s water supply is dwindling dangerously low, with some citizens only receiving clean water in their communities once a week. To put that into perspective, that is over half of the country’s population, suffering the effects of climate injustice.
It is not just rural communities who are victims of climate injustice. For the last two months, we have watched as Australia has been ravaged by its worst ever bushfire season. We are watching as the mistakes that we, the western world, are catching up to us as well as others globally. There are no signs that the rate at which we are seeing all this destruction is slowing.
So, what is being done?
In November of 2016, the Paris Agreement came into effect after 18 months of deliberation between the United Nations Framework on Climate Change and it’s members. However, it was only in November 2019 that all 195 UNFCC members had signed the Paris Agreement.
In it’s briefest of terms, the Paris Agreement refers to an agreement created by the UNFCC to tackle the ever increasing threat of the climate crisis. The primary focus of the Paris Agreement was to prevent from the global average temperature from rising above 2 degrees celsius, and to pursue effort to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees celsius. In accordance with the Paris Agreement, it’s parties must determine, plan and report back to the UNFCC what contributions it is making towards mitigating climate change. Reports take place every five years, and it is expected that the first true results of the Paris Agreement will be seen in November 2021.
The Paris Agreement is monumental in the fact it is the first pact of it’s kind to hold so many different government bodies, globally, to their responsibilities towards climate justice. Unfortunately, however, there is some doubt surrounding the practicality of the Paris Agreement and how effective it will be in achieving its aims towards climate justice.
When asked by the BBC in May 2017, Prof John Shepherd of the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton aired his concerns surrounding the agreement. In his statement he indicated how difficult the goals set out by the UNFCC are going to be to achieve: "Since the only mechanism remains voluntary national caps on emissions, without even any guidance on how stringent those caps would need to be, it is hard to be optimistic that these goals are likely to be achieved."
Where does the UK stand in all of this?
In June 2019, the UK became the first major economy to pass a net zero emissions law. This effectively means that the UK has made a legal commitment to reduce its contributions to carbon emissions by 100% by 2020. When this was announced, Minister for Energy and Clean Growth Chris Skidmore spoke for gov.uk (UK government’s official website): “The UK kick-started the Industrial Revolution, which was responsible for economic growth across the globe but also for increasing emissions. Today we’re leading the world yet again [...] putting clean growth at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy.”
With literal national governments coming together to tackle the climate crisis, it can be hard to see where people like you and I fit in. Take a walk around my university campus and everyone is clutching a colourful ‘keep-cup’, talking about the deal they got at the local zero-waste shop or how they received a bamboo toothbrush in this year’s Christmas stocking. My generation, ‘gen Zers’ as we’re often referred to, seem to spearheading the campaign of a movement towards sustainable living. Cutting out single use plastics, making investments into high-quality clothing instead of fast fashion, or alternatively, shopping second hand. Meatless Mondays is another extremely popular trend I’ve noticed amongst my peers - those of them that haven’t already made the move towards vegetarianism or veganism.
In December 2019, Tinder released their ‘Year in Swipe’ statistics; data they had collected surrounding generation Z, the age group that had used Tinder the most that year. They found that generally the words that most frequently appeared in Zer’s profiles included ‘climate change’, ‘social justice’ and ‘the environment’. It appears from this study that generation Z prioritises action towards climate justice as so important to themselves, collectively, that they are actively seeking out partners that feel the same way. Similarly, a 2018 Deloitte report found that 77% of Zers felt strongly about their social and environmental views that they would only work for organisations they felt their views aligned with.
This collective social defiance of the climate crisis is exactly what is needed to achieve climate justice. The climate crisis is a global concern, an issue that we all have a hand in solving, no matter how big or how small. As the generation next into adulthood, the working world and government, it is our responsibility as citizens as the world to educate ourselves on the climate crisis and adamantly insist that those in power make the changes they can to solve it, whilst we are making our own.
However, the onus is not entirely on us as individuals, or even as social groups. Sustainable living - all of those trendy bamboo cups and palm-oil free soaps are expensive, because they are fashionable and because they are more expensive to be produced when meant for long-term usage. Again, it is often the working class who are forced to participate in waste culture, because it is the only option available to them. Hence, it is unrealistic to hold the everyday person to the responsibility of the absolute catastrophe that is the climate crisis. Of course, we can all make choices to be mindful of our water wastage, of how and when and where we choose to travel, to adapt our diets to a degree… But the only people who can truly make change are the pen pushers in high-up places. The government. The corporations. The one percent.
Pressure groups are attempting to tackle these monster conglomerates and their anti-environmental practises. In October 2019, Greenpeace UK found that Coca-Cola was once again the worst contributors to plastic pollution with 3 million tonnes of their plastic packaging being gathered from oceans yearly, closely followed by PepsiCo, with 1.7 million tonnes being strained from the sea. The organisation’s head of ocean plastic’s campaign explains why this is an issue: “These companies have the resources to come up with innovative reusable and refillable packaging. But instead they focus on recycling or swapping from one throwaway packaging to another.”
It is up to us as consumers to make conscious choices as to which companies we support and which we boycott, whilst recognising that until we cut off their funding - us - that they will continue to pollute, with their products or with their means of making those products. Climate justice can only truly be achieved when those in power want to achieve it, which is unfortunately, going to be when it is profitable for them. Recognise what you can do realistically in your own life to combat your personal climate change contribution and consider if you feel it is enough. If not… Perhaps it is time for you to seek out your local environmentalist group to start tackling those big businesses with the money, and by proxy, the power.
How are you going to do our climate justice?
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