In a world already mired with socioeconomic and political injustices, climate injustice adds more injury. Before prioritising climate justice, understanding injustice serves as a key to imagining the bigger picture. Longer than a century and a half of burning Earth’s resources, climate change popped up as its byproduct. Climate change has triggered numerous changes to the environment, climate and weather patterns.
Massive floods in Pakistan, heat waves haunting Europe bypassing the Mediterranean Sea, extremely severe formation of the Biparjoy Cyclone in the east-central region of the Arabian Sea, droughts in the Horn of Africa, hurricanes in the Caribbeans and melting of gigantic glaciers are some of the incidents that occurred in recent years. Hark back, the injustice is: that the population that becomes victims are widely different from those having considerable contribution to climate change.
For the Maldives, Seychelles, Tuvalu, and Palau, among others, climate change serves as a time bomb. The climate change repercussions perpetuate life-threatening impacts on the island countries owing to the widespread melting of gigantic glaciers. The rising waters in the oceans will catalyse the small islands to disappear any time soon. Isn’t it unfair? Are island countries responsible for their land disappearance?
The rising waters in the oceans will catalyse the small islands to disappear any time soon.
Compensating countries for all the toll caused by large economies is known as climate justice in legal terms. Loss and damage fund, in technical terms, nations are paid reparations to recover the loss in the form of either man or material. With the temperature of the globe rising – global warming – in snail-pace, climate justice is brought into action to provide means and coerce to take measures to forestall the rise before it becomes too little too late.
Since it took centuries and more to warm the globe, considerable time is required to reverse it. If not centuries. The concept of climate justice is to turn the country’s economy and functioning style into something more environmentally friendly by negating fossil fuel usage bit by bit. It is farcical to think that countries will fluctuate overnight from nonrenewable and renewable energy sources because many countries’ economies solely depend on fossil fuels. Take Aramco of Saudi Arabia and OPEC participants. Like them, many other Middle Eastern nations function on fossil fuels.
To slow down the usage of non-renewable and to accelerate the adaptation of renewable energy sources, international organisations come to the rescue signing treaties and agreements among the nations to stick to renewables and act upon actions minimising carbon emissions into the environment. Kyoto Protocol, Rio Declaration and Conference of Parties (COPs) are the leading apparatus to a) help financial compensation to climate-struck vulnerable countries to recover the loss and damage, b) to make their pledge and provide frameworks in adopting novel initiatives to minimise the carbon emissions.
The process of compensating the countries starts with the island countries given their vulnerability to climate change and its repercussions. Island nations are prioritised because the oceanside waters are rising rapidly as mentioned in the third paragraph of the piece. Not just Tuvalu, many other island regions are sinking in Asia as per a report issued by the United Nations recently stating “Asia wracked hardest by climate in 2023”.
The justice is, say developing countries, to compensate us as much as $100 billion by 2030 to reverse and recover the loss and act upon actions less harmful to climate change and the environment and as time passes by, the finance will also skyrocket since according to climate scientists, the same developing nations will require $400 billion by 2040 and over $1 trillion by the half threshold of this century. With time, not only will the amount of recovery and adaptability will rise, but the period will also get stretched. The best time is now.
By prioritising intergenerational equity, compensating climate debts in dribs and drabs – or otherwise – and addressing the slogan and “right to development”, the world will surpass this cataclysm sans causing an arm and a leg as it historically did. What’s happening right now to combat climate change is just the tip of the iceberg. Setting climate justice as the primary purpose and sowing the seeds of intergenerational equity will catalyse positive change and avert doomsday. In the age of socioeconomic and political inequalities and injustices, the world cannot afford climate injustice and as long as this injustice persists, climate change will continue to haunt and hunt down lives. Climate justice is the last hope of humanity since via this justice an environment suitable to all can be created.
After the Glasgow, Sharm El-Sheikh, and UAE, all eyes are on Azerbaijan, and Baku, in the Conference of Parties, to see the world commit to pledges made in the previous conferences in different countries and renew the pledges to climate justice and environment protection for the survivability of all species breathing on the globe. Though many ineffective and ephemeral attempts are attempted, bringing the global temperature into the doldrums – in static, motionless mode – will require all the nations across the globe to lead this mission to help the world achieve this goal and sustain and maintain life and temperature since unity is power.
The writer is a freelancer. He can be reached: insafalibangwar98@gmail.com