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Climate Change: an Environmental Justice Perspective
Climate change is a problem which affects us, as humans, on an unprecedented and global scale, as well as our environments – and thus our future livelihoods. Despite contrasting understandings of climate change, mainstream attitudes suggest we tackle environmental issues at face value, and favour solutions such as carbon offsetting schemes and renewable energies. However, environmental justice (EJ) theory argues that environmental issues must also be understood as a matter of human rights, and that solutions must also take into account the historical and social contexts of environmental degradation.
Overarchingly, EJ understands climate change as an intersectional issue rooted in histories of colonialism and inequality, and argues that climate change solutions must be grounded in notions of distributional, procedural and recognition-based justice – or risk ignoring the structural factors behind this crisis.
As a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently highlighted, climate change has been historically sidelined in favour of economic growth. Often, large corporations (such as fossil fuel companies) hold influence on whether the effects of climate change – including rising sea tides, global warming, pollution, and coral bleaching – are addressed.
Yet, Teresa Anderson explains that climate plans often ‘greenwash pollution’ to allow business to operate as normal, meaning that current solutions do not fully fix problems because they adopt environmental issues into existing structures like capitalism (Carrington, 2021). Hence despite increasing evidence of climate change – and its immediate need for attention – we continue to see a lack of serious action or change.
So what is Environmental Justice?
In 1982 protests broke out in Warren County, North Carolina, following the revelation that local soil was tainted with the toxic chemical PCB (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014, p.2). This conflict held the interest of environmentalists, black rights, and civil rights activists, which led to a shared understanding of complex environmental issues – and provided the intersectional foundations of EJ.
This overlap between sustainability and social justice highlights the ‘disproportionate exposure’ of minority groups to the impacts of environmental degradation, as Banzhaf (2019) highlights the parallels between race, pollution, and poverty (pp.180-195).
EJ theorists also ground their work in notions of social justice and human rights, and believe that environmental issues must be understood as indicators of broader social and political inequality – and thus addressed as both immediate issues and structural causes.
Drawing from the work of John Rawls, Schlosberg (2007) explains that to understand the concept of distribution, one must also ‘address the processes that conduct maldistribution’ (p.2). For example, Cantzler (2020) highlights how redistribution has no significant effect unless also accompanied by procedural justice – such as the distribution of power in decision-making, or through the recognition of experiences (pp.48-49).
And so, EJ focuses on retrieving distributional, procedural, and recognition-based justice for groups disproportionately vulnerable to, and affected by environmental issues, while also being excluded from decision-making processes.
Climate Change as Environmental Colonialism
Because colonial and capitalist actions facilitated processes of industrialisation and militarisation, climate change can be understood as an ‘intensification of environmental change imposed on Indigenous peoples by colonialism’ (Whyte, 2017, p.153). Essentially, because colonialism disrupted the natural ecological conditions upon which Indigenous peoples’ health, culture, and self-determination were reliant, Whyte (2017) argues that anthropocentric (caused by humans) climate change can be seen as a continuity of colonial oppression (p.154).
In the 1800s, Nauru’s natural phosphate reserves drew the interests of capitalist powers (first Germany and later Britain) who soon established large-scale mining (Kanngieser, 2018). These mines dominated 80% of the usable land on the island, causing migration to areas now threatened by coastal erosion, and causing food insecurity due to a growing reliance on imported goods (Kanngieser, 2018).
In this case, the combined effects of climate change and colonial legacy can be explained as human rights violations caused by a transformed continuation of ‘environmental colonialism’.
Climate Change as a matter of Justice
EJ stresses the significance of achieving distributive, procedural, and recognition-based justice for marginalised groups, in order to accurately portray their struggles within the mainstream environmental agenda.
As climate change is often portrayed as an ‘anthropocene’ or ‘one-world’ issue, the blame for environmental issues is placed on the individual, and experiences of environmental degradation are homogenised (Joshi, 2021, pp.82-83). Yet, this dominant paradigm ignores the disproportionate effects felt by groups such as Indigenous peoples, and highlights the unequal distribution of power over who dictates popular environmental discourse.
Authorities such as the International Climate Justice Network (ICJN) and the US National Climate Association agree that anthropocentric climate change affects marginalised groups – such as women, Indigenous peoples, the poor, and the elderly – sooner and more significantly than other populations (Schlosberg, 2007, p.6; Whyte, 2017, p.155).
Here, EJ explains that these groups are predisposed to environmental vulnerability due to their unique reliance on local environments and their connection to land, as well as structural factors like the unequal distribution of economic and political power.
Who pays for Climate Change?
As discussed, the term ‘anthropogenic’ is problematic as it assumes ‘all humans are implicated in, and affected by colonialism, capitalism, and industrialisation in the same way’, and should thus share the blame for climate change equally (Whyte 2017, p.159). However, Agarwal and Narain (2019) argue that this perspective – which is prioritised by leading figures such as the UNEP – is further evidence of environmental colonialism, as solutions are determined by economic and Eurocentric standards (p.84).
In 2005, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) filed a lawsuit against the USA on the grounds that their contributions to climate change – as one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases – have directly caused human rights violations, and should thus be held responsible (Tsosie, 2007, pp.1669-72).
This raises the debate of who should bear the ‘environmental responsibility’ of fixing environmental degradation.
Is it the West? Is it fossil fuel companies? Is it all of us? Does it really matter?
So what now?
The Green Belt Movement in India is one solution which approaches climate change from an EJ perspective – as an intersectional problem tied to human rights. Nesmith (2021) explains how this group established links between ecological problems and the structural and political oppression of women (p.43).
Overarchingly, EJ explains the importance of addressing climate change as both human rights and environmental issues. How might this change the way we understand environmental problems? And how might this help us design future solutions?
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As always, thank you for reading this post and I hope it has shared a little bit of insight into an incredibly complicated topic. To learn more, or do some fact-checking (highly encouraged!), check out the resources below:
Bibliography
Agarwal, A., & Narain, S. (2019). Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism. In India in a Warming World (pp. 81-91). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199498734.003.0005
Banzhaf, S., Ma, L., & Timmins, C. (2019). Environmental Justice: The Economics of Race, Place, and Pollution. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33(1), 185-208. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26566983
Cantzler, J.M. (2020). State-Indigenous contention, decolonization and environmental justice. In Environmental Justice as Decolonization: Political Contention, Innovation and Resistance Over Indigenous Fishing Rights in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States (pp.40-58). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.4324/9780429259524
Carrington, D. (2021, 9 August). IPCC report’s verdict on climate crimes of humanity: guilty as hell. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/09/ipcc-reports-verdict-on-climate-crimes-of-humanity-guilty-as-hell
Joshi, S. (2021). Environmental justice and the right to development. In Climate Change Justice and Global Resource Commons: Local and Global Postcolonial Political Ecologies (pp. 79-110). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.4324/9780429346231
Kanngieser, A. (2018, 22 October). Climate Change: Nauru’s life on the frontlines. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/climate-change-naurus-life-on-the-frontlines-105219
Nesmith, A. A., Sloan, L. M., & Lawrence, L. A. (2021). Environmental Injustice: transformative change towards justice. In The intersection of environmental justice, climate change, community, and the ecology of life (pp. 39-56). Springer. https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-030-55951-9_4.pdf
Schlosberg, D. & Collins, L., (2014). From environmental to climate justice: climate change and the discourse of environmental justice. WIRES Climate Change, 5(3), 359-373. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.275
Schlosberg, D. (2007). Defining Environmental Justice. Oxford University Press (9780199286294). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199286294.001.0001
Whyte, K. (2017). Indigenous Climate Change Studies : Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene. English Language Notes 55(1), 153-162. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/711473.
Good post Tate.
But I must say, I am tired of hearing Colonialism (by extension we could call this Monarchism) being blamed for most problems on the planet, from Black Lives Matter to Environmental injustices….we were not present and I think humanity was just trying to find a way to Progress and get us out of the dark ages and mining, industrialization and establishing railways, etc, and yes they were ways to progress but in exchange it disturbed the earth in ways that we can’t take back.
I am more interested in what can we do now. In finding a BALANCE in everything we do and that means daily CONSUMERISM. Let’s stop buying new Iphones and Android phones as soon as a new version comes out. That lithium being mined for all those phones, not great for environment, same for our laptops, etc… Yes we can focus on stopping the use of single use plastics, but why don’t we ban all cruise ships from the planet! Let’s invest in renewable clothing, like companies such as Arc’teryx and Pantagonia are doing. I could go on and on.
We should also try to change our eating habits as well. With globalization and trade of all goods around the world, we can now eat pretty much everything when we want. As a kid in Canada, you had to wait for the season to eat certain produce and when you did, it was awesome, everything tasted so good. You only ate beef once a week, maybe, not because your parents were vegan, but because it was expensive and it was special, etc… I could go on and on with examples. I know I sound like some old fart, but being in the moment and finding a balance by going back to our roots I think is a big way where we can all do some changes.
Lastly, I invite you to read and maybe subscribe to a great Canadian Magazine (you may have already heard of it), https://www.corporateknights.com/. You will see that some companies are truly trying to get on the right side of things. Whenever I read it, I am encouraged by young people such as yourself that we still have a chance.
Cheers!