Climate Justice Requires More Than Just Reparations

Cyclone Pam (2015) flooding in Vanatu, Port Vila seafront on 14 March

While recent heat waves caused thousands of deaths, the Trump administration was busy dismantling policies that regulate greenhouse gases, based on the theory they do not harm human health.

Meanwhile, the international community appears to be taking climate change seriously, as evidenced by a new ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that allows countries harmed by climate change to sue those responsible.

The ruling, triggered by a group of Pacific Island students facing inundation of their homes due to sea-level rise, opens a pathway to financial compensation from countries that emit the most greenhouse gases, as well as assistance in restoring ecosystems and infrastructure damaged by climate change.

The ICJ ruling comes amid the planned evacuation of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, with 80% of its 11,000 residents seeking climate visas to emigrate to the Australian mainland. Island nations like Tuvalu and Vanuatu, which led the ICJ case, stand to suffer the most from climate change.

The ruling acknowledges that those who bear the most responsibility—especially the richest 1% of humanity who generate 66% of greenhouse gas emissions—should share more of the costs.

Reparations from high-emitting countries are a first step toward climate justice, a partial remedy for the wildly uneven distribution of wealth and harms caused by global economic growth, which has caused emissions to skyrocket. Billionaires’ net worth climbed by $2 trillion in the past year, while the number of people in poverty has changed little since 1990.

Climate change compounds the misery of those left behind in this system. They will comprise many of the one to two billion people displaced or killed by climate change this century.

Globalization and endless economic growth were sold with the promise of alleviating poverty for billions. Yet the majority of benefits flow to the few at the top, leaving less than 10% of wealth for the bottom 50%. The rest flows to the global middle class, set to grow to 5.3 billion by 2030, mostly in Asia.

This rapidly growing class of consumers means rapidly growing demand for fossil fuels, transportation, appliances, processed and packaged foods, and meat-centric diets, all of which lead to enormous increases in greenhouse gases.

This explains why population growth and global consumption growth account for most of the increase in carbon emissions since 1990, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. It cancels out most reductions from clean energy, efficiency, and alternative technologies.

Hundreds of millions emerging from poverty deserve a better standard of living. But the middle-class lifestyle marketed through globalization spreads at the cost of diverse, traditional, and more Earth-centered lifeways. Its spread is not a simple “development” success story; it demands redressing unsustainable consumption levels and vast inequalities.

There is no greater inequality than ecological overshoot, where we use resources faster than Earth can regenerate, and our pollution surpasses what oceans, forests, and ecosystems can absorb. This year, July 24 marked Earth Overshoot Day—the date past which humanity’s resource use exceeds Earth's annual capacity. It comes earlier each year, signaling we are increasingly stealing from future generations by destroying planetary life-support systems.

Climate reparations are a step toward climate justice for people alive today but do nothing about the profound intergenerational and interspecies injustice of ecological overshoot. To address that, there is no escaping the need to scale back our economies, consumption, waste production, and population.

Finally, after decades of economic and population growth at the expense of the future, contraction may be on the horizon. Unrestrained extraction has brought our economic system to a point of diminishing returns. From fossil fuels to fresh water to trace minerals used in renewable energy systems, resources are running short, which will likely limit future growth.

Given these realities, global fertility declines should be cause for celebration. Yet recent news about record low fertility rates of 1.6 children per woman in the United States has been met with alarm by political leaders and wealthy interests who benefit from perpetual growth.

Those who care about humanity and the planet should welcome declining population growth in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. It is a partial reprieve for the climate and a relief valve for inflationary pressures from resource scarcity.

Climate reparations and broader conversations about climate justice are necessary but not sufficient. Protecting and restoring the planet’s climate and ecosystems will require fundamental reordering of our economic system away from endless growth and ecological overshoot toward rational contraction within Earth’s limits and providing for everyone’s basic needs.

Kirsten Stade is a conservation biologist and communications manager of the NGO Population Balance.