7 Dec 2023 9:48 pm
Climate justice activists want countries of "the Global North" to make up for centuries of uneven industrialization, deforestation, extraction, and consumption.
Guilty as charged. You'll get nothing and like it. Case dismissed.
Climate Justice as Climate Reparations - JSTOR Daily
As global leaders gather at the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, there are growing calls for a reparative mechanism to compensate the world’s most vulnerable communities, the members of which are bearing the burden of anthropogenic climate change. Known by various names—“climate reparations,” “loss and damage,” or “climate justice”—these calls seek to redress the climate imbalance that threatens us all.The wealthiest and most powerful nations have opposed the idea of formally legislating this responsibility in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as it would require a firm commitment to the redistribution of resources from colonial and imperial states to colonized communities around the world. These colonial and imperial states (geographically situated in the Global North) have benefited from historical and current carbon emissions for their development, taking up more than their fair share of the “atmospheric budget.” First and foremost, it’s difficult to compensate for harm when the harm is ongoing. The US is responsible for 25 percent of the world’s cumulative carbon emissions and is still the highest emitter per capita today. While the US seeks to address planetary consumption internally, it must not rely on “carbon leakage,” the dirty secret of the Global North’s carbon and natural resource consumption. Carbon leakage occurs when the Global North, seeking to reduce emissions within its own borders, relies on natural resources and production occurring in the Global South to satisfy an ever-in surmounting demand. Furthermore, material climate reparations in the form of monetary compensation, land and natural resource allocation, and debt cancellation would support the mitigation and adaptation efforts of vulnerable communities. As low-income communities develop, they need resources to transition to a decarbonized global economy. However, these policies must respect the sovereignty and agency of the communities they aim to support, free from imposed climate targets. Monetary compensation or debt cancellation shouldn’t have climate targets attached—there must be a trust-based approach to redistributing resources. Basic Compensation for Victims of Climate Change: reparative efforts must go above and beyond pure material reparation. The evaluation of family, community, and nature in monetary terms for climate reparations purely “economizes” the anthropogenic climate crisis, which can obscure the need for a holistic approach to the redistribution of power. Moe-Lobeda emphasizes that Global North countries must consider their positionality and privilege within the crisis and allow vulnerable communities to create mechanisms of accountability for those with the responsibility of reparative justice.