Climate Injustice Research Articles

Finding cool spaces in Frankfurt/Main–a heat protection measure for the population of a major city

Abstract With the European continent heating up faster than ever, cities are facing major challenges protecting their population from the effects of climate change. Heat can have devastating effects on people’s physical and mental health with particular significance for the known vulnerable groups - the elderly and young children, people with pre-existing conditions, those who are pregnant and those who cannot protect themselves sufficiently for various reasons plus of course people working outdoors. Following the 2003 heat wave, the city of Frankfurt/Main registered a significant rise in mortality and morbidity, leading the Health Protection Authority to be increasingly concerned with heat-related health problems in the Frankfurt metropolitan area. The city has since developed various systems to protect the population from extreme heat and developed an all-encompassing climate change action plan (CCAP). Part of the CCAP is the provision of cool spaces to provide refuge from the heat for the public and implementation of this project started in the summer of 2022. However, with no legislative basis on which to build such a platform, some creative measures were required to ensure its success. Here, we will not only present the challenges we faced but the solutions we found - and the results of our currently ongoing evaluation of the actual use of our cool spaces to help other cities make their journey to similar measures easier. Starting with a brief overview of the CCAP, we will show the cool spaces’ place within the strategy, followed by our original plan of action and what happened when this plan came into contact with the reality of life in a large and diverse city. We will touch on climate injustice and the difficulties in reaching those parts of the population who actually need protection the most. Finally, we present our evaluation strategy and results together with the adjustments we are considering in moving forward with this climate change protection measure. Key messages • (Establishment of) climate change adaptation measures should urgently be enshrined in law. • Health inequality corresponds to climate inequality and continiously challenges adaptation measures.

Degrees of exclusion: The politics of heat adaptation in Palestine–Israel, 1950–1980

This article investigates the development of Israeli heat adaptation research from 1950 to 1980 and its role in advancing Israeli nation-building and settler-colonial policies. Focusing on the scientific career of the Zionist military doctor Ezra Sohar, renowned for reforming the Israeli Defence Forces' “water discipline,” the article traces the emergence of Israeli thermal physiological research. It reveals the shift from the view that certain races were better adapted to specific climates to a “universalized” notion of acclimatization as a physiological process possible to anyone. The universal notion of acclimatization created new forms of exclusion, as the indigenous Arab-Palestinian population, particularly Bedouins, lost their perceived racial advantage in heat adaptation; Jewish-Israeli thermal physiologists argued that Jews were better adapted to heat due to cultural factors. Finally, the article follows Sohar's advocacy for air conditioning, which he promoted as the “ideal solution” for establishing a Western, “developed” Israeli society. Thus, the article demonstrates how the rise of air conditioning during this period further reinforced the exclusion and marginalization of Bedouin communities. It illustrates how planetary dynamics of climate injustice and colonialist policies manifest locally and highlights heat exposure as a form of colonial violence. Sohar's story provides insight into a scientific community driven by the ambition to conquer heat, reflecting a political logic that, to this day, leaves neither past heat adaptation practices nor air conditioning as possible solutions for Bedouin communities coping with a rapidly warming planet.

Digital activism in the future past: How Dutch Extinction Rebellion activists connect past, present and future in their memory work on Instagram

This article investigates the ways in which Dutch Extinction Rebellion activists discursively engage with the past, present and future on Instagram and leverage the platform’s affordances for mnemonic purposes. We argue that Extinction Rebellion activists, in their communication on the platform, connect these temporal planes retrospectively and prospectively. First, Extinction Rebellion activists use the past as a resource for present action aimed at producing lasting change. This relates to cultural reservoirs and repertoires of past injustices. Second, the present is perceived by Extinction Rebellion activists as a concern for future memory. The recording and documenting of climate injustices and the actions of the movement itself are examples of this. Both positive and negative imagined futures are used by Extinction Rebellion activists to legitimise and delegitimise past and present (in)action. In other words, Extinction Rebellion activists’ future imaginaries not just shape present action, but also shape their memory work. Instagram’s affordances of archivability, connectivity and spreadability are used by Extinction Rebellion to support their digital memory work. These socio-technical affordances are thus appropriated as mnemonic affordances for rhetorical and practical purposes. We support these claims through in-depth interviews with Extinction Rebellion activists and a thematic analysis of Instagram content shared by them.

Making climate finance: toward everyday, historically informed, and reparative understandings

The centering of climate finance around a narrow set of institutions, sites, instruments, practices, and technologies is an achievement made possible by the domination of finance capital and policy elites. In this intervention, we shift the spotlight away from such elite projects and practices in favor of a wider understanding of urban climate finance—one that includes a more diverse set of sites, activities and participants. A wider and more inclusive conceptualization of urban climate finance requires accounting for the historical and ongoing role of finance in the production of climate vulnerability. Reconceptualized in this way, urban climate finance expands to include everyday financial life in cities around the world. Everyday climate finance is thus generated in places where the risks and uncertainties of climate change are currently unrecognized by policy elites as such, yet are being managed through improvised repertoires of financial practices. Additionally, (re)considering past financial practices as climate finance (e.g. historical residential redlining that produces climate vulnerability today), provides a rationale for demanding that past and present financial actors account for today’s climate injustices, and contribute to future reparative and abolitionist climate action.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: coping with zoonotic spillovers and climate injustice

ABSTRACT This art installation centers on then-recent outbreaks of rabies and Nipah viruses in India and Bangladesh, and reveals unexpected connections between vultures, fruit bats, and humans. Using Victorian and Dutch decorative arts from time periods in which England and the Netherlands were connected to these contemporary outbreak sites through colonization, the installation highlights the way climate injustice influences which humans and animals bear the most risk in disease spillovers. Using work by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, the installation also considers how culture (particularly art) functions as a psychological mechanism for coping with death anxiety.

Climate apartheid: the failures of accountability and climate justice

PurposeSevere inequality from climate change exists between the Global North and Global South. The North significantly contributes to climate change yet retreats to protect itself against its harmful impacts. Conversely, members of the Global South bear the brunt of the climate crisis with limited protection against its destructive effects. Climate justice aims to address this inequality. This paper explores the effects of climate change reforms and policies that have been established to foster accountability and climate justice.Design/methodology/approachThis research follows a qualitative exploratory case study method. It draws on a supply- and demand-led approach and local accounts to analyse the (in)effectiveness with which six national and international reforms and policies have achieved accountability for climate justice. The research analysed a variety of empirical documents including contemporary research, reports, academic literature, non-government and government documents and policies, media releases and Pacific Islander accounts.FindingsClimate change reforms and policies, which come together to form supply-side accountability, have largely failed to engender accountability in the Global North for the impacts of climate change. Nor have they mitigated climate change to any tangible extent at all. This has created a system of modern-day climate apartheid. Improving accountability and remediating climate injustices going forward will require a focus on demand-led instruments and accountability, which includes the voice of citizens.Originality/valueThis paper responds to AAAJ’s special issue call for examining accounting and accountability with regard to environmental and climate racism. Limited research to date explores the issue of climate apartheid and climate justice and its relationship with accountability. This research attempts to fill that gap.

Subaltern discomfort: a phenomenology of the air-conditioner in the age of climate (in)justice

ABSTRACT In this paper, I use the figure of the air-conditioner to get at the bifurcated issues of access to comfort in the Anthropocene. I think through the phenomenological relations to the air-conditioner, using as my archive Aravind Adiga’s Booker-winning novel The White Tiger. I put forth the theory of what I call subaltern discomfort, arguing that who gets to be comfortable, and why, I argue, is a matter of increasing importance as the climate warms and air-conditioning becomes much more significant in the lives of people worldwide.

The indigenous Pacific Islands’ resilience against climate injustice

ABSTRACT Small island developing states (SIDS), particularly the low-lying islands situated in Oceania within the South Pacific region, are subject to climate injustice; wherein the issue of climate change is intricately linked to their very survival. While mitigation strategies are enacted through the facilitation of knowledge generation and international collaboration, adaptive measures are implemented via a religious and spiritual framework. This distinctive approach represents a defining feature of the indigenous inhabitants within the Pacific SIDS community, serving as a socio-cultural determinant that influences specific outlooks held by Pacific denizens concerning climate variability. This paper aims to explore the rationale behind the inclination of traditional Pacific societies towards embracing a spiritual stance in addressing climate adaptation. It is contended that in confronting climate injustices, the indigenous populations of the Pacific region tend to draw more heavily upon traditional practices and the incorporation of local knowledge alongside conventional approaches, such as scientific, technological, and diplomatic measures. The phenomenon of climate change in the Pacific SIDS is emblematic of susceptibility, calamity, and discourses revolving around trepidation and ambiguity (aporia), necessitating strategies that extend beyond those rooted in secular-Western ideologies.

Educating the temporal imagination: Teaching time for justice in a warming world

Climate change has been called both a ‘slow emergency’ and an ‘urgent crisis’, it creates tensions between human and non-human temporalities, it asks some communities to ‘speed up’ and demands others slow down, and requires choices between present needs, historical responsibilities and future consequences. If students are to understand and confront climate (in)justice, then a ‘temporal imagination’ (Adam, 1998) is required that is alert to the ways that time is central to the politics of a warming world. This paper therefore explores how ‘teaching time’ can support the awareness of and attention to (in)justice. The paper discusses the limits of current approaches to teaching time in education and explores a range of practices for developing ‘temporal attunement’ (Jensen, 2023) that can be found in public arts, Indigenous education, educational philosophy, futures studies and decolonial praxis. It maps out five temporal educational practices of: relational time; rhythm; anticipation and reparation; temporal suspension; and critical time keeping. It argues that these practices can be put into dialogue as a basis for a ‘temporal pedagogy’ that comprises three moves: interruption (of habitual and dominant temporal frames and their production of injustice), attention (to the latent, situated, plural timings and rhythms of the situation), and encounter (through invitations to judgement about the temporal practices that should govern more just collective action in response to climate change). It concludes by working through an example of how such a pedagogy might be deployed to negotiate the conflicting temporalities of socio-ecological change.

‘The system is engineered to do this’: Multilevel Disempowerment and Climate Injustice in Regulating Colorado’s Oil and Gas Development

Abstract Continuing to emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) moves our planet closer to crossing critical tipping points, making ongoing development of fossil fuels an act of climate injustice. Yet, the United States has doubled down on unconventional oil and gas (UOG), becoming the top global producer of hydrocarbons. Significant segments of the public resist UOG drilling, mobilizing to limit or stop production due to intersecting climate, environmental, and public health concerns. However, regulatory conflicts complicate the power of public resistance and problematize the role of the state in facilitating industry. UOG production has rapidly expanded with little capacity for public participation in decision-making. We contend this is a climate injustice—where procedural injustices across levels of governance make it difficult for the public to prevent fossil fuel extraction. We examine these injustices across state legislative, judicial, and executive governance processes in Colorado where residents have actively resisted UOG production. We demonstrate how the public consistently faces procedural inequities and power disadvantages across multiple sites and levels of decision-making, resulting in multilevel disempowerment. In this high-stakes context, our policy ethnography illustrates how these multilevel procedural injustices can facilitate rapid expansion of UOG production, where state-sanctioned activities also constitute broader acts of climate violence and injustice.

Environmental Racism and Climate (In)Justice in the Anthropocene: Addressing the Silences and Erasures in Management and Organization Studies

In this paper, we are situated in postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist epistemologies to study environmental racism in the Anthropocene—a new geological epoch where human activity has changed the functioning of the earth. Drawing from critiques of the Anthropocene, the concept of racial capitalism, as well as environmental justice and racism scholarship, we show how proposed solutions to the climate crisis overlook and may even exacerbate racial injustices faced by communities of color. We contend that a climate justice agenda that is grounded on racial justice is necessary for our scholarship to develop a racially just management and organization studies (MOS). To accomplish this agenda, we propose three shifts: from studying elite institutions to researching grassroots organizations concerned with climate and racial justice, from uncritical endorsement of global technologies to studying local adaptation by communities of color, and from offering decontextualized climate solutions to unraveling racial histories that can help us address racial and climate injustices. We discuss the implications of these shifts for management research and education and argue that MOS cannot afford to ignore climate justice and racial justice—they are both inextricably linked, and one cannot be achieved without the other.

Conceptualising and enacting pathways to transformative climate justice: examples from the Philippines

ABSTRACT Scholarship on climate change adaptation is increasingly moving from incremental responses to climate injustice towards transformative approaches that deliberately change systems to achieve just and equitable outcomes. A transformative understanding of climate justice is relatively new and evidence of how this could be achieved is in its infancy. In this paper, we conceptualise transformative climate justice as comprised of three subcomponents: (1) inclusive justice (seeking to ensure that no one, especially the most vulnerable, is left behind), (2) epistemological justice (drawing upon diverse knowledges and worldviews), and (3) restorative justice (healing and restoration of communities and the environment). We then present examples of how different local communities in the Philippines are experimenting with climate adaptation strategies that embody these three components of transformative climate justice. Through case studies of communities in Itbayat (Batanes), Tambaliza (Iloilo), and Barangay Assumption (Koronadal), we demonstrate how their adaptive strategies contribute to community and ecological resilience. We find that transformative climate justice arises from mundane and everyday struggles, takes place at the “middle place” between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, and requires a deliberate redistribution of power to counter decision-making processes that reproduce injustices.

Meta-analysis of the climate change-tourism demand relationship

As climate change urgency intensifies, understanding its impact on destinations and the development of adaptation strategies becomes critical for sustainable tourism. This article, through a meta-analysis of 290 climate change elasticity estimates in tourism from 34 studies, examines the influence of climate factors and tourists’ adaptive behaviours on tourism demand. It also projects the situations countries will face by 2050 under ongoing climate change scenarios. Findings suggest that low- and middle-income economies and Small Island Developing States, despite their minimal carbon contributions, will face significant tourism losses. In contrast, high-income countries might see increased travel demand and lead to more emissions. This will aggravate climatic conditions and inflict greater losses on less-developed communities. This finding exemplifies a vicious cycle of climate injustice, highlighting the disparities in climate-related social costs globally.

Indigenous climate justice in Aotearoa New Zealand: the dangers of (mis)recognition within climate policymaking

This paper explores Indigenous climate justice in the settler-colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand. We adopt the interdisciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the extent to which Māori knowledge systems (mātauranga Māori) and Māori status as Treaty partners with the Crown (New Zealand Government) were recognised included in New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Act (ZCA). Through our exploration we reflect on and explore Māori experiences of climate injustice through lack of recognition or misrecognition. CDA helps to identify whose voices dominated the ZCA process, revealing unequal power relations between stakeholder groups, the Crown, and Māori. By analysing policy documents, long-form submissions from Māori, and interviews with Māori we shed light on the power dynamics which shaped the ZCA process and the implicit assumptions regarding Māori participation in climate policy decision-making. The misrepresentation of Māori as stakeholders rather than treaty partners perpetuates historical legacies of colonization. By applying CDA within the context of climate justice, we highlight tensions between Māori aspirations for partnership and the actual treatment of Māori as stakeholders rather than Treaty partners. By closely examining the narratives surrounding the formation of the ZCA, CDA reveals the ways in which Māori voices are side-lined, their aspirations and concerns dismissed, their Indigenous knowledge systems (mātauranga-a-iwi and mātauranga-a-hapu) marginalized, and their rights to retain their tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty) violated.

China at COP27: CBDR, national sovereignty, and climate justice

ABSTRACT Based on event ethnography conducted at the UNFCCC COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, this article examines the contradictory ways in which China, as a key actor in global climate negotiations, has shaped climate (in)justice, as well as how the spatiality of the COP reinforces inequity. Despite the important role China has played in promoting equity for developing countries through advocating for the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) and of national sovereignty throughout the UNFCCC process, China’s discursive deployment of both principles in negotiations exacerbates existing injustices between countries and at scales below the nation-state. Both principles were useful in achieving unity to successfully press for the establishment of the Loss and Damage fund. Nevertheless, the ways in which they are deployed also compromise the interests of marginalized peoples, especially those residing in countries that belong to the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. This is particularly the case when principles of CBDR and national sovereignty are combined with procedural arguments and apparently technical discussions. These limited the scales and manifestations of injustice that could be addressed through the UNFCCC process.

Feeling climate injustice: Affective climate violence, greenhouse gaslighting and the whiteness of climate anxiety

This paper explores the process of feeling climate injustice. It aims to situate climate distress as an issue of justice, in order to generate more politically accountable and empowering responses. It firstly situates climate anxiety, solastalgia and climate disaster trauma as symptoms of affective climate violence, where harm that could have been prevented was instead consciously and systematically exacerbated by fossil fuelled political regimes. It articulates witnessing as a practice of affective climate justice, an approach that would recognise climate distress as violence, and offer support, apology and redress for this violence, including through seeking to prevent future climate change. However, the second section outlines how, in perverse efforts to maintain fossil fuel interests, climate distress is often further amplified through practices of greenhouse gaslighting – denying, deriding and dismissing people's experiences of harm. Greenhouse gaslighting is outlined as a patriarchal practice of emotional abuse that is enabled by and seeks to perpetuate white-colonial-extractivism. Thirdly, the paper argues that even within progressive circles, current efforts to witness climate distress potentially fail to enact affective climate justice due to discourses that centre whiteness and privilege, rather than recognising and responding to the different and unequal forms of affective climate violence experienced by diverse peoples.

Expertise, moral subversion, and climate deregulation

The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, 2016). Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice.

Social psychological pathways to climate justice: Emerging insights and intersecting challenges

As the impacts of climate change grow in frequency and intensity, climate justice—the recognition of climate change’s unequal impacts across populations, as well as inequities in the benefits and burdens from societal responses to climate change—has become a central focus of climate policymaking, advocacy, and scholarship. In this review, we take stock of these trends to consider what social psychologists can contribute to this discourse. We draw from integrative perspectives within the environmental social sciences, as well as emerging insights from psychology, communication, and public health, to highlight three areas with growing policy relevance that are ripe for social psychological inquiry: (a) understanding factors that influence climate vulnerability, its causes, and remediation; (b) identifying barriers and pathways to inclusive climate governance and decision-making; and (c) enhancing justice in climate solutions. For each, we consider the relevance of group and intergroup processes and highlight emerging empirical insights and key unanswered questions. We conclude by considering the urgency and challenges of translating psychological research to address climate injustice and highlighting opportunities for advancing the societal relevance of this research.

Climate Diplomacy in Action: India-Sweden Relations

Climate change has put the globe in a state of emergency, with its impact beyond transnational borders. Moreover, the disparity between the Global North and Global South has aggravated extreme weather events and climate-related emergencies in the latter. Sweden, as the largest Nordic country in the European Union, has set a target to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2045, while India, emerging as a leader in the Global South, aims to reach this goal by 2070. While imploring the Global North- Global South debate on climate injustice, the study primarily focuses on India and Sweden’s bilateral relationship using climate diplomacy as a strategic tool, delving into mutual agreements, policy frameworks, and innovative strategies implemented by both nations. The objective is to investigate and address the functions of climate diplomacy in enhancing bilateral ties between India and Sweden, thereby expediting the achievement of their respective climate objectives. The study explores and elaborates how India and Sweden have supported joint research and development (R&D) projects, collaborative waste management programs, green finance and industrial partnerships in clean energy infrastructure and seeks to enhance global climate initiatives through diplomatic cooperation in promoting sustainable development. Furthermore, the paper aims to shed light on the significance of diplomatic cooperation in advancing sustainable development and facilitating the Nordic countries' access to the Global South.

The Island's Call for Justice: NGO Advocacy in the Climate Litigation Case of Pari Island in Indonesia

Climate injustice has become a prominent issue following the Paris Agreement, where emissions generated by developed countries burden local communities in developing countries. Consequently, one of the efforts to address climate injustice for communities in the Global South is through climate litigation processes. The process itself is a challenging one since the litigants need support legally and politically to ensure it has proceeded. Here, non-governmental organisation’s (NGO) engagement is the most feasible support that local communities can access. This article analyzes the dynamics of climate justice attempts through a unique case study: climate litigation between residents of Pulau Pari, a small island located in the Java Sea, Indonesia, and the cement giant Holcim-LaFarge in Switzerland. This climate litigation is advocated by three collaborating NGOs: HEKS (Switzerland), ECCHR (Germany), and WALHI (Indonesia). Using a qualitative method, we analyze the role of NGO advocacy in the litigation process using the advocacy function concept by Joseph Szarka; issue framing, construction and dissemination of knowledge, responsibility attribution, political lobbying, public mobilization and agenda setting. We argue that the advocacy support of the three related NGOs amplified the climate litigation process beyond legal proceedings. The strategy of advocating climate litigation is an innovative way to create wider recognition from the international community and push adaptation to the struggle of the local community.