{"id":52728,"date":"2022-03-16T21:51:20","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T20:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=52728"},"modified":"2025-07-02T09:37:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:37:56","slug":"justice-centre-stage-ipcc-report-climate-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/52728\/justice-centre-stage-ipcc-report-climate-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice takes centre stage in the latest IPCC report- what that means for climate action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The latest IPCC climate science report emphasises the importance of climate action grounded in justice. In this post, Amrekha Sharma of the Climate Justice & Liability Project reflects on the significance of some key findings for climate justice advocacy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe weather, which we had learned and predicted for centuries, had become uggianaqtuq<\/em>\u2014a Nunavut term for behaving unexpectedly, or in an unfamiliar way. Our sea ice, which had allowed for safe travel for our hunters and provided a strong habitat for our marine mammals, was, and still is, deteriorating. I described what we had already so carefully documented in the petition: the human fatalities that had been caused by thinning ice, the animals that may face extinction, the crumbling coastlines, the communities that were having to relocate\u2014in other words, the many ways that our rights to life, health, property and a means of subsistence were being violated by a dramatically changing climate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"Aurora
The aurora borealis (the northern lights) viewed over an old bowhead whale jaw bone left by Inupiat hunters at Point Barrow.
\u00a9 Rose Sj\u00f6lander \/ 70\u00b0<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

In her compelling story, The Right to Be Cold<\/em><\/a>, Inuk leader, Sheila Watt-Cloutier described her testimony to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. She brought the Inuit petition<\/a> in 2005, one of the world\u2019s first climate justice cases, on behalf of all Inuit of the Arctic regions of the United States and Canada who were experiencing human rights violations from climate change. The petitioners believed that if you protect the rights of the Inuit hunter on the ice, you would protect the \u201csentinels of climate change\u201d<\/a> and the \u201cworld\u2019s early warning system.\u201d They called on the protection of various sources of human rights law. They summoned the authority of the world\u2019s scientists in the IPCC 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. They detailed the impacts of climate change they had been experiencing. But the Commission decided<\/a> in 2006 that it was not possible to process the petition, because it could not determine whether there had been a violation of their human rights based on this information. They were unable to \u2018see\u2019 these \u201calleged facts\u201d as human rights violations.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cClimate responses must centre justice\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n\n

The IPCC\u2019s<\/a> reports on climate science have evolved since that time. Mary Robinson said, \u201cif there is a climate change problem, it is in large part a justice problem [1].\u201d She said that \u201cto deal with climate change we must simultaneously address the underlying injustice in our world and work to eradicate poverty, exclusion, and inequality [2].\u201d Part of that injustice has been a refusal to listen to what communities living with climate impacts like the Inuit saw, felt and knew long before the IPCC reports confirmed it. So, it is no small thing that the world\u2019s climate scientists choose to not only acknowledge, but to centre the \u201cjustice problem\u201d in different ways in the recently released IPCC WGII report<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

i) Diversity of knowledge<\/h3>\n\n

There are important implications for climate justice advocacy as a result of braiding other ways of knowing together with climate science. The IPCC report centred the value of diverse forms of knowledge, including millennia of Indigenous knowledge on environmental adaptation [3] and local knowledge, to not only understand and evaluate adaptation actions that reduce risks from climate change [4], and enhance resilient development [5], but to avoid the pitfalls of maladaptive actions [6] such as deploying unproven technological \u2018solutions\u2019. What counts as \u201cknowledge,\u201d \u201cscience\u201d and \u201ctruth,\u201d whose knowledge counts as such, and who decides are questions of power that sit at the heart of climate justice. With its spotlight on a diversity of knowledge, the report reminds us that, to borrow from Arundhati Roy, there have never been \u201cvoiceless\u201d people, only those \u201cpreferably unheard [7].\u201d The Inuit petitioners asserted that through their Qaujimajatuqangit<\/em>, or IQ<\/a>\u2013a living, generational body of knowledge about their environment\u2013they knew their land, and the land was changing. The Black Summer bushfires of 2020 lifted the knowledge and fire practices of First Australians as part of a new paradigm in \u201ccaring for country.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n\n

\"The
The Bastock family live in the town of Manyana, NSW. The bushfires reached the end of their street and destroyed much of the bushland around their home.
\u00a9 Cybele Malinowski \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

ii) Historical patterns of inequity<\/h3>\n\n

The IPCC also recognises that people\u2019s vulnerabilities to climate change are driven by \u201cpatterns of intersecting socio-economic development, unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, and governance [8].\u201d This is like looking through a wide-angle lens with a time-lapse function on climate impacts, and it reveals more inconvenient truths: vulnerability to climate change is not an unfortunate accident authored by an invisible hand in the sky. It is the result of choices made again and again, by some with power over generations. Climate change\u2013previously framed predominantly as a scientific problem, and an economic problem\u2013 when properly situated in its historical context as the IPCC recognises, is an international justice problem.<\/p>\n\n

Different questions<\/a> appear, and some are questions that advocates in climate and social justice movements around the world have long asked: why are some countries \u2018developing\u2019 and some \u2018developed\u2019? How did the latter acquire such wealth and power to eventually destabilise Earth\u2019s life support systems? Who is responsible for taking the boldest actions first? \u201cLoss and damage\u201d discussions, mired in a frame of charitable benevolence for developing countries, if tethered to historical truths, start to look rather like decades of receipts arriving on the doorstep of developed countries. Celebrating their resilience<\/a> but failing to pay is both immoral and unjust<\/a>..<\/p>\n\n

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The top map shows which nations are most responsible for excess emissions. The bottom map shows which nations are most impacted by it. If we are not attentive to the colonial dimensions of climate breakdown, we are missing the point. pic.twitter.com\/IahYsjV7O5<\/a><\/p>— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) March 1, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote>