Climate Justice
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We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy; a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lays disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
~Rachel Carson, Writer, Scientist, Ecologist, Environmentalist, Marine biologist
Creating and Developing Awareness
The website Peacefuluprising.org describes climate justice as:
“ [W]orking at the intersections of environmental degradation and the racial, social, and economic inequities it perpetuates.”
Peaceful Uprising is a nonprofit collective committed to action to combat the climate crisis and build a just, healthy world.
The Mary Robinson Foundation dedicates itself to action in order to realize its vision of a world engaged in the advance of climate justice. To that end, the foundation created what they call principles of climate justice.
They are:
- Respect and protect human rights
- Support the right to develop
- Share benefits and burden equitably
- Ensure that decisions on climate change are participatory, transparent and accountable
- Highlight gender equality and equity
- Harness the transformative power of education for climate stewardship
Use effective partnerships to secure climate justice
Educate, Inform and Create Inspiration
What This Looks Like in Real Life (Stories and Case Studies)
Links to case studies created by the Mary Robinson Foundation
Women’s Participation – An Enabler of Climate Justice
Rights for Action – The Right to Participate
Rights for Action – The Right to Food
Case Study: Why the Native American pipeline resistance in North Dakota is about climate justice (September, 2016)
Kyle Powys Whyte Timnick Chair in the Humanities / Associate Professor of Philosophy and Community Sustainability, Michigan State University
The full text of this article is available.
Over the past months, hundreds of indigenous persons and their allies have gathered near the crossing of the Missouri and Cannon Ball rivers in the ancestral territories of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Using nonviolent means, their goal is to stop the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that would connect production fields in North Dakota to refineries in Illinois. Their primary fear is that an oil leak would threaten water quality for many members of the tribal community.
On September. 9, a federal judge denied the tribe’s request for an injunction to halt completion of the pipeline. But shortly after, federal officials said they would temporarily stop construction pending further review.
As a scholar of indigenous studies and environmental justice, I’ve been following these developments closely. The pipeline’s construction has already destroyed some of the tribe’s sacred burial grounds. During protests, the protectors – as many gatherers prefer to be called – have endured violence, including being pepper-sprayed, attacked by dogs, denied nourishment and threatened by lawsuits. But despite the national attention to this case, one point has gone largely ignored in my view: Stopping DAPL is a matter of climate justice and decolonization for indigenous peoples. It may not always be apparent to people outside these communities, but standing up for water quality and heritage are intrinsically tied to these larger issues.
Disproportionate suffering
Climate justice – the idea that it is ethically wrong for some groups of people to suffer the detrimental effects of climate change more than others – is among the most significant moral issues today, referenced specifically in the landmark Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Skills Development and Activities
How to Implement or Put into Action
http://www.naacp.org/issues/environmental-justice/
http://globaljusticeecology.org/
Source Links:
http://www.peacefuluprising.org/what-is-climate-justice
