Spatializing Climate Justice: Justice Claim Making and Carbon Pricing Controversies in Australia

Abstract

Recent years have seen significant academic attention to conceptualizing climate justice and how its ideas might be mobilized in political debates on climate policy. This article contributes to these debates by advancing two arguments. The first concerns the need for greater examination of how climate justice coexists and competes with more established political and justice considerations during the negotiation of climate policies. I argue that distinguishing analytically between normative interpretations of climate justice and justice claims made by parties affected by climate change or by mitigation or adaptation policies provides fertile ground for deepening understanding of the multivalent and relational nature of climate justice and confronting challenges to its incorporation into climate responses. The second argument concerns the importance of exploring how proponents and opponents of climate action strive to develop “spatial anchors” for justice claims to increase their legitimacy in policy debates. Based on analysis of carbon pricing controversies in Australia, the article illustrates how supporters of carbon pricing initiatives stressed international justice issues, whereas opponents mobilized multiscalar and multivalent international, national, regional, and local justice narratives to gain traction for their arguments. The article concludes by calling for further investigation of the multivalence of climate justice and of how climate justice might be spatially represented to advance its leverage in political debates on climate policy.