Climate Justice

Climate justice is based on the understanding that, while climate change requires global action, the historical responsibility for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions over the past 250 years lies with the industrialised countries of the North. Cheap energy – in the form of oil, coal and gas – has been the engine of their rapid industrialisation and economic growth.

We can’t treat climate change as a separate issue: like everything else, power relations run right through it. Any movement based around climate change has to be enmeshed in the rest of the problems of the world’s movements.

Likewise any movement for a liveable future needs to take on climate change. Climate change is not a cause; it’s a symptom (albeit one with the potential to kill off the patient). Equally the impacts and interconnectedness of climate change will undermine any success we might have in other areas. Looking at it this way round, we can see that climate change has the potential to link us not just as victims of disaster but as people fighting together.

Inside the global climate negotiations, rich industrialised countries have put unjustifiable pressure on Southern governments to commit to emissions reductions. At the same time, they have refused to live up to their own legal and moral obligations to radically cut emissions and support developing countries’ efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

The abject failure of governments to provide a political solution to the climate crisis in Copenhagen was unsurprising to those who, from the outset, understood the UN as an institution whose interests lie in extending the legitimacy of global capitalism and the nation-state. Those who placed their hope in the COP15, due either to naivety or necessity, left with a sense of disbelief. More and more are now coming to the realisation that it is social movements, not governments, that have the power to make the necessary changes to solve the climate crisis.

The solutions to systematic repression, exploitation, and the climate crisis are the same. Climate Justice means linking all struggles together that reject neoliberal markets and working towards a world that puts autonomous decision making power in the hands of the communities. We look towards a society which recognises our historical responsibilities and seeks to protect the global commons, both in terms of the climate and life itself.

The climate crisis demands that we, as residents of the Global North, ask what kind of world we want to live in, and recognize that the answer is as much a social issue as it is an environmental one. Climate Justice is more than a theoretical goal—it is a practice in the movement against climate chaos. No effort to create a livable climate future will succeed without the empowerment of marginalized communities. No justice will be found without an end to policies long-pursued by the wealthy countries which treat communities - from Iraq’s oil fields to Indonesia’s palm oil plantations to Appalachia’s coal fields merely as resource colonies.

There’s no doubt that a global social movement with climate change as one of its central concerns is the only way to tackle human-induced climate change. Climate Camp is an active part of that movement and a place where it can constitute itself.We look forward to the next Climate Camp here in Aotearoa, celebrating these possibilities and confronting the root causes of climate change not by 2020 or 2050, not upon a timeline set by the market but in the here and now. So get in touch, get involved and come and join us for some serious climate action.