A week ago, the United Nations COP 21 climate negotiations ended with a signed deal touted as a victory. I want to highlight an extremely important component of climate change conversations that is far too often overlooked: climate justice. Climate justice is a form of environmental justice that pushes for the fair treatment of all people and freedom from discrimination. It advocates for the creation of policies and projects that address climate change and the systems that create climate change and perpetuate discrimination.
One goal for COP 21 set by climate justice advocates was to work towards climate justice as a form of global justice. Some expectations for how climate justice goals might be accomplished in the final Paris agreement included text on sub-1.5°C warming, an acknowledgement of indigenous rights, gender, and human rights in the final document, greater monetary commitments to adaptation measures (and greater monetary commitments in general), and commitments to large reductions in emissions made by industrialized countries and especially those historically responsible for the most emissions. Today, reflecting back on COP 21 as the Paris talks come to a close, climate justice manifested itself in surprising ways.
The most surprising ‘victory’ by far, was the number of developed (Annex I) countries that endorsed a 1.5°C goal in lieu of 2°C – these countries included France, Germany, and Canada. But what do these temperature goals really mean?
The two most commonly mentioned temperature goals are 2°C and Business as Usual (BAU). In the contemporary history of climate science, 2°C has been considered the greatest amount of warming we can experience while preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system per the Kyoto Protocol. In contrast, BAU is a model of global emissions that assumes growth without hindrance of GHG output and which predicts warming up to 4°C which is considered highly unsafe. However, using 2°C and BAU creates an artificial binary rhetoric of “safe” and “unsafe” temperature that does not encompass the present, growing danger. Acknowledging that we have hit 1°C warming over pre-industrial average, each day that passes and each additional ton of GHGs that enter the atmosphere augments the real and present danger presented by climate change. Climate change is a now issue, and climate justice advocates argue that including the goal of 1.5°C maximum warming in the Paris document is a step towards international recognition of climate change as not just an environmental issues, but also an intimately human one that demands justice.
The endorsement of the 1.5°C goal by multiple developed countries during negotiations was a success for climate justice advocates because these countries will experience the effects of climate change less acutely than many developing countries and because these countries are largely responsible for funding the rapid mitigation necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C. Former U.S. negotiator John Pershing points out, however, that setting a 1.5°C goal may be powerful only as a symbol – the IPCC states that net global emissions must be brought to zero in the next eight years to not surpass 1.5°C, which is not really possible while preventing a devastating economic crash. So while conversations of 1.5°C may not equate to true incorporation of climate justice into the deal, it marks an important milestone to eventually serving up (climate) justice.
The greatest takeaway from COP 21 in regards to climate justice is that the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is designed to and responsible for creating a deal, not necessarily a just one. Climate justice is something that must be moved towards both inside and outside the framework of the UNFCCC and COP text with urgency. Organizations like 350.org, Demand Climate Justice, and the theater company BP or not BP offer meaningful opportunities for individuals to push for justice, which is one step towards making climate justice a tenet of future UNFCCC agreements and a global understanding of climate change. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The question remains: how can we bend it faster?
–Madeline Lisaius
Contact Madeline Lisaius at mlisaius ‘at’ stanford.edu.