Climate Change Injustices. How do we tackle the injustices?
Climate change is naturally unfair. The countries and communities that are most at risk from its impacts, and are least able to adapt, are those that have contributed least to the problem.
If poorer nations pursue economic growth by the same means from which the industrialised nations have benefitted, such as by burning coal and clearing forests, they will only add to the climate change problem.
Undeniably, the richest nations insist that all nations – including the poorest ones – should act to limit climate change, but when the poorest nations ask the richer ones for help to do so, they don’t get the finance and technology they need in return.
The international negotiations on climate change are themselves unfair, as some countries wield considerable power while others have little to bring to the table other than moral arguments. The more vulnerable nations can do little when industrialised nations fail to act to limit climate change, or even break promises they have made in the past. And when the richer nations provide ‘climate finance’ in the form of loans not grants, they are in effect asking poorer nations to pay to fix a problem the richer nations created.
According to Mary Robinson, “We need to change from business as usual. And we shouldn’t underestimate the scale and the transformative nature of the change which will be needed because we have to go to zero carbon emissions.”
There is also inequity with countries, as it is the poorest communities that are most vulnerable to climate change.
Again, these tend to be the people who have done least to contribute to the problem.
These ethical and moral aspects of climate change there for calls for climate justice and civil society organisations from across Africa should unite and call upon governments and others to recognise the rights and needs of the climate-vulnerable poor.
Climate justice activists too should voice in and call for the equitable distribution of resources to tackle climate change and for climate-vulnerable people to take part in decisions about how the money gets spent.
These ethical ambiguities, of how to ensure fair opportunities for all people and how to ensure that nations and people act according to their responsibilities and capabilities are what should form the core of the climate change story at local, national and international stages.
Professor Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate once said, “In the cause of history, there comes a time when humanity is called upon to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground.”
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