Climate Injustice Research Articles

Blueing business as usual in the ocean: Blue economies, oil, and climate justice

Oceans are increasingly looked toward for their contribution to addressing climate change. These so-called ocean-based climate “solutions” often fall under the umbrella of the “blue economy,” a term used to refer to new ways of organizing ocean economies to provide equitable economic and environmental benefits. Yet, thus far the literature exploring blue economies and blue economy governance has largely overlooked or downplayed its equity and justice roots and implications, including how blue economies are embedded in multiple scales of environmental injustices. This is particularly important when blue economies include offshore oil production. The purpose of this paper is to both emphasize the need and provide an approach to incorporate justice and equity—specifically climate justice—into blue economy planning and scholarship. We build on conceptualizations of blue economies as assemblages to draw attention to the global reach of climate impacts associated with oil that are often overlooked or ignored at sites of production and through regional governance. We argue that greenhouse gas emissions from the life cycle of oil should be included in policies and planning (including blue economy planning) at sites of production, but that this must also incorporate underlying power structures that lead to uneven impacts and climate injustice. We look at environmental assessments as a regional governance tool that could be used to shape opportunities and openings to organize blue economies differently. To illustrate these points, we look at how environmental assessments are playing (and could play) a role in enacting and shaping Newfoundland and Labrador's blue economy.

‘Measuring’ Collective Trauma: a Quantum Social Science Approach

In the twenty-first century the world faces the stark reality that’s far from any visions of an ideal world, accompanied by an epidemic of social inequality and global injustice. Many social and global issues such as the refugee crisis, climate injustice, racism, whitism, and terrorism are rooted in serious, untreated historical traumata. These traumata have been experienced by one or more members of a family, group, or community, and may have been passed down from one generation to the next through epigenetic factors. Phenomena of collective trauma can be described more understandably through its interpretation by the quantum social science of Wendt (2016). This interpretation provides a social pathology that offers methodological recommendations (methods of treatment) for social therapy. One potential example is the collective trauma integration process (CTIP) developed by Thomas Hübl (Hübl, T. (2020). Healing Collective Trauma: a process for integrating our intergenerational and cultural wounds. Boulder: Sounds True.), which is a method to restore fragmentation by addressing and integrating individual, ancestral and collective trauma. This paper focuses on one methodological consideration for building a new culture through the integration of collective and intergenerational trauma, which is a framework based on collective trauma research in psychology, sociology, and quantum social science.

A feminist geopolitics of bullying discourses? White innocence and figure-effects of bullying in climate politics

This paper examines discourses of bullying in international climate politics. Drawing on two cases, first the (social) media coverage which surrounded climate activist Greta Thunberg’s visits to the UK in 2019, and second Thunberg’s interactions with former US President Donald Trump, alongside a theoretical framework inspired by feminist geopolitics, the paper argues that discourses of bullying can be conceptualised as a series of figurations (the ‘bully’, the ‘bullied’, and the ‘anti-bully’) which reproduce individuated relations of power. Overall, the paper argues that individuating bullying discourses perpetuate a politics of white innocence which preserves petro-masculine power in international climate politics. To contest these unequal power dynamics, the paper argues for an anti-bullying politics grounded in collective, intersectional challenges to climate injustice.

Perception, physiological and psychological impacts, adaptive awareness and knowledge, and climate justice under urban heat: A study in extremely hot-humid Chongqing, China

Urban heat, the combined effect of heatwaves and urban heat islands (UHIs), is a severe challenge for many cities around the world. While there have been numerous studies on urban heat, society's understanding of it is still insufficient, hindering its mitigation and adaptation. This paper aims to investigate people's vulnerability to, and perception, awareness and knowledge of, urban heat. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 562 respondents in the hot and humid city of Chongqing, China in the summer of 2020. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis H test and logistic regression. Results indicated that urban heat is generally understood as having a moderate severity, while there is limited knowledge of heat-related risks. The perceived heat-related psychological impacts are more severe than physiological impacts. There is limited awareness and knowledge of heat-impact reduction methods. Nevertheless, people's awareness, perception and knowledge of urban heat increase once they suffer heat-induced impacts, indicating exposure/experience-driven awareness and knowledge. Moreover, climate injustice among different groups (e.g. gender, age, education, income, health) of people related to heat challenges was identified. People's perception, vulnerability, awareness and knowledge increased with age, but interestingly decreased with increasing education level and improved health conditions. Economic factor was not critical to heat-related responses. Men could be more vulnerable to physiological symptoms and daily functioning than women. The results of this study provide an understanding of urban heat perception and adaptive knowledge, enabling practitioners and policy makers to formulate effective urban heat mitigation and adaptation policies and regulations.

Dissonance between framing & acting for climate justice

ABSTRACT Residents of Southeast Florida face many climate-related impacts, so to understand how climate change is framed and acted upon in the region, we conducted a two-part study of community organisers and residents. First, the first author participated in an 11-week, community-based workshop on climate advocacy, leadership, justice, and resilience to identify how a climate action initiative framed climate change and fostered community leaders and allies. We found “place” and “justice” to be two prominent frames. After the 11-week training, seven of the 18 attendees (or 39 percent) were then interviewed on their understanding and application of the training. Participants expressed a deeper appreciation of the local risks on both coastal and inland communities, and discovered how spatial disparities in residence (between higher-income, coastal communities and lower-income, inland communities) led to climate injustice and climate gentrification. Their understanding was further substantiated by their direct experience with Hurricane Irma. Yet the more privileged participants resisted the organisers’ overarching goal to foster community-based climate justice engagement. Several of the participants their relative privilege and inexperience with social injustice as deterrents. While it was understood that everyone in the region would be affected and that there were social and economic differences in terms of impact and vulnerability, the privileged participants perceived these disparities as too daunting to become a climate justice leader or ally.

Detecting land use and land cover change on Barbuda before and after the Hurricane Irma with respect to potential land grabbing: A combined volunteered geographic information and multi sensor approach

Two months after the hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Barbuda, the construction of a new international airport led to accusations of degrading the Codrington Lagoon National Park and contravening the conventions of the Ramsar Program. Scientists have analyzed the aftermath with respect to historical legacies, disaster capitalism, manifestation of climate injustices and green gentrification. The main objective of this study was to quantify and allocate land use and land cover change (LULCC) in Barbuda before and after the 2017 Hurricane disasters. Remote sensing data and volunteered geographic information were analyzed to detect the potential changes in natural LULC so that human activities and the emergence of artificial surfaces could be detected. Human-induced LULCC occurred at different sites on the island, with decreased activities in Codrington, but increased and continued activities at Coco and Palmetto Points. With an accuracy of 97.1 %, we estimated a total increase of vegetated areas by 6.56 km2, and a simultaneous slight increase in roads and buildings with a total length of 249.67 km and a total area of 1.43 km2. The vegetation condition itself depict a steady decrease since 2017. New hotspots of human activity emerged on the island in the Codrington Lagoon National Park.

Climate Insurgency between Academia and Activism

Abstract This interview focuses on a spectrum of urgent challenges facing marginalized human and other-than-human communities, including the intersecting crises of global anthropogenic climate disruption and state and institutional racist violence. We discuss and consider the opportunities, limits, and contradictions of pursuing transformative, intersectional political change and scholarship through efforts to bridge community activism and academic labor. We also critically engage questions concerning the role of the state in the context of racial capitalism and the production of environmental and climate injustice, and how grassroots movements have responded to these concerns. Specific movement formations included in this discussion include the Central Coast Climate Justice Network of California, the Movement for Black Lives/Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and multispecies abolition democracy. The importance of radical, multi-issue politics and cross-movement solidarities is also given serious attention.

Waking from Paralysis: Revitalizing Conceptions of Climate Knowledge and Justice for More Effective Climate Action

Despite decades of climate science research, existing climate actions have had limited impacts on mitigating climate change. Efforts to reduce emissions, for example, have yet to spur sufficient action to reduce the most severe effects of climate change. We draw from our experiences as Ojibwe knowledge holders and community members, scientists, and scholars to demonstrate how the lack of recognition of traditional knowledges (TK) within climate science constrains effective climate action and exacerbates climate injustice. Often unrecognized in science and policy arenas, TK generates insights into how justice-driven climate action, rooted in relational interdependencies between humans and older-than-human relatives, can provide new avenues for effectively addressing climate change. We conclude by arguing for a shift toward meaningful and respectful inclusion of plural knowledge systems in climate governance.

Urban Climate Insurgency

Abstract Urban climate insurgency refers to the ensemble of grassroots initiatives aiming to tackle climate change from a radical point of view. Insurgency in this case does not imply violence but rather refers to the radical rejection of the current socioecological system. While explicitly challenging planetary ecocide and climate-change effects, these forms of insurgency target all policies that make the urban condition yet more precarious, demonstrating that climate mobilization is inherently intersectional. The focus here is on the urban dimension of this global climate insurgency that unsettles the dichotomy between rural and urban. It is on the urban terrain, already fissured by racial capitalism but also traversed by antiracist and promigrant movements, that the climate emergency becomes a climate and social justice issue. This introductory essay offers a fresh approach to the new municipalist project and digs into its environmental agenda. From New York to Mälmo, from Rio de Janiero to Istanbul, passing through Jakarta, Bangalore, and Naples, this special issue explores the articulation of radical climate-change politics, the materialization of climate injustices, and grassroots reactions to these injustices in the urban sphere.

Responding to the climate crisis – taking action on the IPCC 6th Assessment Report

Responding to the climate crisis – taking action on the <scp>IPCC</scp> 6th <scp>Assessment Report</scp>

School strike for climate: A reckoning for education

AbstractIn this article framing the special issue on the global school strikes for climate, we ask: what if education is not the solution, but part of the system young people want to change? In conversation with school strikers and reflecting on the contributions to this issue, we argue that the strikes pose a reckoning for education. Five key themes emerge from this special issue: (1) students are striking because of the affective weight of climate injustice; (2) students learn through their participation in striking, in contrast to the often insufficient climate change education taught in schools; (3) young people are becoming climate change educators through their roles as strikers; (4) strikers are patronised through paternalistic structures (including schooling) that ostensibly exist to protect them; and therefore (5) we need to reimagine education. We then advance four propositions for education in response to young people’s modest demands for a liveable future: (1) young people are in and of the collapsing climate; (2) youth voices need to be taken seriously, without excusing adult and collective responsibilities; (3) multigenerational, more-than-human, intercultural collaborations must be practiced in education for climate justice; and (4) we must learn to navigate ontological uncertainty and attend to ethical complexity.

From Technocracy to Democracy: Ways to Promote Democratic Engagement for Just Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Building

Climate change and the policy responses to it have implications in terms of (in)justice. Research in fields such as political ecology and environmental justice emphasizes the importance of policy-making addressing and responding to climate injustices. It, moreover, stresses that democratic engagement is imperative, since no universal agreement on the meaning of “justice” exists. Democratic engagement on climate (in)justice is, however, hampered by the predominance of technocratic policy frames. Considering this, knowledge of ways to promote democratic engagement is called for. This study develops such knowledge related to policy-making for climate change adaptation and resilience at the local level, in developed country contexts. Specifically, it draws on the “what’s the problem represented to be?” approach to conceptualize different styles of democratic engagement and examine the possibilities and limitations of each. From the data, comprised of previous research, representations of three styles of democratic engagement are identified and analyzed: (1) closure-oriented engagement centered on changing behaviors, (2) closure-oriented engagement centered on changing the systemic production of unjust practices, and (3) disruptive engagement centered on changing the systemic production of unjust practices. The contributions of this study are relevant to researchers, policymakers, activists and others interested in how to promote a democratization of climate policy-making.

A emergência climática é uma guerra ou estamos descolonizando o sistema? O enquadramento de metáforas conceituais no discurso da emergência climática

The visible worldwide consequences of climate change have triggered countless pub-lic debates among scientific communities from several knowledge areas, raising public awareness to this issue. Rhetoric and discourse strategies have played a crucial role on how global warming cannot be ignored, thereby instigating policymakers to implement urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions and other causes of environment degradation. Thus, the present paper aims at dissect-ing a brief corpus of Instagram posts from two renowned environmental activist entities, the NGO Fridays for Future and Greta Thunberg, with the purpose of identifying new metaphorical repre-sentations in the multimodal youth climate activism, alongside with other social aspects involved in this rhetoric. For that goal we chose the hashtag #Uprootthesystem, currently adopted by some environmental activists who believe that the climate crisis narrative makes room for other historical reparation discourses, arguing against colonization, poverty, discrimination, racism, class inequal-ity, climate injustice, among others.

What should evaluation learn from COP 26? Views of evaluation practitioners

Leading evaluation practitioners were asked about lessons from the recent 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) for evaluation practice. Contributors emphasize the importance of evaluating equity between rich and poor countries and other forms of climate injustice. The role of the evaluation is questioned: what can evaluation be expected to do on its own and what requires collaboration across disciplines, professions and civil society – and across generations? Contributors discuss the implications of the post-Glasgow climate ‘pact’ for the continued relevance of evaluation. Should evaluators advocate for the marginalized and become activists on behalf of sustainability and climate justice – as well as advocates of evidence? Accountability-driven and evidence-based evaluation is needed to assess the effectiveness of investments in adaptation and mitigation. Causal pathways in different settings and ‘theories of no-change’ are needed to understand gaps between stakeholder promises and delivery. Evaluators should measure unintended consequences and what is often left unmeasured, and be sensitive to failure and unanticipated effects of funded actions. Evaluation timescales and units of analysis beyond particular programmes are needed to evaluate the complexities of climate change, sustainability and to take account of natural systems. The implications for evaluation commissioning and funding are discussed as well as the role of evaluation in programme-design and implementation.

Sociological Approaches to Climate Change: Policy Directions for the Transition of the Climate Crisis and Climate Injustice

Sociological Approaches to Climate Change: Policy Directions for the Transition of the Climate Crisis and Climate Injustice

Climate Change in the Philippines

Impacts of Climate Change in the Philippines include threats to biodiversity such as coral loss, declining rice yields, more intense droughts, and higher sea-level rise. While there is a strong scientific consensus that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are generating climate change that then contributes to stronger typhoons, the Filipinos have low responsibility for causing climate change. The struggle that is faced by the Philippines, as well as other developing countries, is more than just an environmental problem, it is an example of climate injustice.

Mapping as instrument to support public authorities in risk analysis and promotion of climate justice

Urbanization is one of the most powerful anthropogenic causes of Earth change. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims that human influence on the warming of the soil, ocean and atmosphere is unequivocal. People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or otherwise marginalized are especially vulnerable to climate change and also to adaptation and mitigation responses. Climate injustice refers to the fact that groups in a greater situation of vulnerability present challenges that accumulate as a result of less political power and great social inequality and, therefore, are disproportionately harmed by the impacts of climate change. Thus, this article seeks to address, from indices such as the NDBI, NDVI and census data from the IBGE Census, for the year 2010 and data from the analysis of Climate Risks and Vulnerabilities in Recife, the climate (in)justice in the city of Recife. For this purpose, 3 images from the TM sensor and one from the OLI sensor aboard the Landsat satellites were used. Results show that NDBI values above 0.21 were extended to various areas of the city of Recife over the years, while the NDVI showed a decrease in vegetation cover, indicating greater soil sealing and construction of buildings. These results, in accordance with the mapping of vulnerabilities to climate change, corroborate that a public policy focused on reducing climate injustices is essential, especially when it is concluded that the areas with the greatest social vulnerability are those with the greatest climate vulnerability.

“Collaborative Research and Action for Climate Justice in California”

ABSTRACT How can university scholars and community activists effectively collaborate to produce generative, empowering, and materially impactful knowledge and actions concerning climate change and climate justice? In this paper, we report on a collaborative effort between climate justice non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and university faculty and students to conduct research to produce innovative ideas and insights about just transitions in California and to support social movement campaigns aimed at actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions by keeping fossil fuels in the ground. This collaboration was jointly initiated by faculty and students at a California university alongside leaders of local social movement organizations dedicated to climate justice, as a response to several proposed development projects that would expand oil extraction and fossil fuel use in that state. We argue that these efforts produced a climate justice gestalt that serves to amplify our productivity, power, and impact well beyond what any single partner could do separately or individually with respect to addressing climate injustices in our region. This is our plan for addressing climate change from an anti-authoritarian, participatory approach that will speak to new developments in the scholarship on climate and environmental justice studies and collaborative research methods.

Ask me anything: Ciara Muldoon

Based in Exeter, UK, Ciara Muldoon holds a BSc in experimental physics from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a PhD in science studies from the University of Bath. After working as a science-communication consultant, she became an Internet entrepreneur with her husband, Neil Williams, a former aerospace engineer. Their latest project is a charitable search engine that helps tackle climate change and climate injustice.

“La justicia ambiental es para ti y para mí”: Translating Collective Struggles for Environmental and Energy Justice in Puerto Rico’s Jobos Bay Communities

Rural, coastal communities in the Jobos Bay region of southeastern Puerto Rico confront disproportionate harms as an energy sacrifice zone. This space is constituted by imported fossil fuel dependency, economic and climate injustices, environmental racism, ecocide, US colonialism and imperialism, neoliberalism, and racial capitalism. In response, many grassroots actors mobilize against the toxic assault on their communities to push for alternatives beyond the suffocating status quo via apoyo mutuo [mutual support]. This survival work and movement building occur literally in “the outdoors” and in other intertwined multispecies environments, challenging narrow, oppressive colonial, and consumerist constructs that reduce “the outdoors” to recreation and thus erase the numerous ways that people labor in, honor, and defend places and spaces to lead good lives. Thus, critical examinations of communication and race/racism/racialization in and about this colonial US territory must grapple with the brutalities and pain caused by systemic and structural cruelties and translate how, where, and with whom self-determined and potentially liberatory environmental and energy justice advocacy takes shape to refuse a trauma-only narrative. Studying these embodied and emplaced efforts positions energy and power broadly construed, including in the form of collective action. This article centers on the collaborative energies of local grassroots actors and scholars who ideologically and politically align and who value working together toward anti-colonial praxis. To provide one example of how these collaborations can yield public-facing projects that contribute to struggles tied to the survival and well-being of the most impacted communities, this essay focuses on the creation of an environmental justice children’s book. This bilingual text documents and translates the pollution caused by a US-owned, coal-fired power plant and mobilizations to topple this corporate invader. The article concludes by reflecting on some of the difficulties and possibilities that emerged during multi-year coalitional relationships that inform and exceed the children’s book. To reject racist and colonial dominant assumptions and discourses about outdoor spaces as only privileged recreational areas or as a “blank slate” devoid of people and culture, this project narrates how grassroots organizers and scholars persist in continued study and struggle for power(ful) transformations in Jobos Bay and beyond.