Climate and Environmental Justice

The consequences of environmental degradation and climate disruption are vast, and range from displacement to food insecurity to mental health challenges. Like many other global issues, they will first and disproportionately impact vulnerable communities; especially Indigenous peoples, local traditional communities, racialized people, and those in low-income countries as well as poor people in wealthier countries. This brings social, racial, and environmental justice to the forefront of responses internationally and locally. These emergencies are not only environmental problems: they interact with social systems, privileges and embedded injustices, and affect people of different class, race, gender, geography and generation unequally. Solutions found in international frameworks must thus also address long-standing systemic injustices, and resonate with the local struggles of southern, Indigenous and local communities against the legacy of colonialism and exploitation.