Von Rebecca Froese

"After me, the deluge" is probably a good way to summarize our approach to climate change in the global North. Even though the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stated in 1992 that the dangerous anthropogenic, i.e. man-made, disruption of the climate system must be prevented, not much has happened in the 23 years since then. In the Paris Agreement of 2015, the states reaffirmed their commitment to limiting global warming to 2°C, and if possible 1.5°C, and to making their national climate targets more ambitious every five years from 2020. But today, seven years later, it is clear that Germany and many other countries are not achieving their own climate targets. Calls for a determined political will for change have been stirring in many places for a long time. The concern: Climate change cannot only be seen as an environmental challenge, but should above all be seen as a political and ethical problem. The climate is a common good. Everyone has the same rights to use the atmosphere. However, since the beginning of industrialization, the industrialized countries in particular have been able to make use of this right and have caused significantly more greenhouse gases than they would have been entitled to. The prosperity of today's industrialized societies is based on these emissions. In dealing with the challenges of climate change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change therefore also calls for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures to be "based on equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities".¹ In the following, I present two concepts for climate justice. The first approach looks at climate justice, divided into three dimensions, from an institutional, macroscopic perspective. The second approach takes an actor-centered perspective and describes climate justice on a rights-based foundation. The comparison of the two approaches shows that climate justice is a versatile concept that can be thought of at different levels depending on the area of application.

Three dimensions of climate justice [1]

The first question that arises is: "Who has emitted the most greenhouse gases and benefited from them?" The "polluter pays principle" based on this is probably the best-known demand of climate justice. It calls for a fair distribution of the burden (burden sharing) of climate change mitigation and adaptation, taking into account the cause of the problem and the economic capacity of the countries. In other words, those who have benefited most from greenhouse gas emissions should reduce their emissions more quickly because their carbon budget is already as good as used up or exceeded. According to some definitions, the principle of burden-sharing can go so far as to demand high monetary compensation payments for this so-called ecological debt.

The second question is: "Who suffers most from the negative effects of climate change?" This dimension of climate justice is referred to as the sharing of risks (risk sharing) is introduced. Analyses of different regions of the world show that individual countries and population groups are differently vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. However, this does not depend directly on the severity of the effects of climate change, but rather on how resilient a country or population group is overall, or whether appropriate adaptation options (e.g. irrigation systems) are available. Climate change often proves to be a further risk intensifier here.

The two dimensions of climate justice described above, the fair distribution of burdens and risks, are supplemented by Germanwatch [2] with a third dimension, which I would like to mention here for the sake of completeness, but which is only of secondary relevance to my argument: the fair distribution of opportunities. fair distribution of opportunities (opportunity sharing), which in this context often emphasizes on a macroscopic level that appropriate financial and market-based incentives for resource efficiency require the necessary innovations and investments for decarbonization.

Climate justice through the lens of human rights [3]

Climate change is a global problem and therefore requires a global solution. The dimensions mentioned above illustrate why we have achieved so little towards this global solution in the last 28 years. Abstract demands have not led to the hoped-for loss and reparation payments for which many poor countries have campaigned at the climate negotiations with the support of various non-governmental organizations. These demands remain valid, but their prospects of being implemented in the future seem rather slim. It is therefore time to address and deal with climate change from a rights-based perspective. Climate change jeopardizes human rights as universal and indivisible rights for all people and worsens the chances of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Rights to food, water, health and adequate housing are at stake, just as political and civil rights could be called into question. It is therefore all the more important to listen to the voices of those affected/vulnerable to human rights violations and to understand climate change as a social problem.

This includes not only problems that arise directly as a result of climate change, but also those that arise as a result of planning climate protection and climate adaptation measures that are insensitive to justice. Specifically, this approach is often used by grassroots and non-governmental organizations to differentiate the dimensions of climate justice from an actor-centric perspective: Justice with (1) the global South, (2), generations, (3) gender, (4) marginalized groups, (5) the non-human part of our co-world. These dimensions also look at the unequal distribution of burdens and risks, but this time from a much more differentiated and accessible perspective, as the focus here is on the fulfillment of basic human needs.

Justice with the global South looks at the dependencies caused by globalization, which encompass much more than the unequal distribution of the benefits of the atmosphere. This includes, for example, trade policy, which favors the flooding of markets with surplus EU agricultural products, thereby displacing local producers, destroying jobs and making people more dependent and thus more vulnerable to climate change.

Justice with the generations means that "the chances of future generations to meet their own needs are at least as great as those of the present generation."² (Brundtland Report, p. 51, para. 49) For almost four years, students have been taking to the streets instead of going to school every Friday to demand this. Most of them were not even born when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted. And yet they fear for their future because the satisfaction of their basic needs and human rights can no longer be guaranteed.

Justice with the sexes is intended to illustrate that the effects of climate change affect people of different genders to different degrees.³ For example, in rural regions of the global South, women are more affected by climate change if, for example, they have to travel longer and longer distances to access water during a prolonged dry period. In addition, girls are more likely than boys to drop out of school if the family's income needs to be supplemented, for example because a harvest was not as productive as hoped.

Justice with marginalized groups means, above all, ensuring that historically evolved and existing injustices are not reproduced on the basis of power politics, economic or environmental and climate interests. One example is the protection of entire forests that were previously the livelihoods of local and indigenous population groups and whose livelihoods were taken away after the establishment of the protected zone.

Justice with the non-human part of our environmentis not included in the consideration of human rights, but is nevertheless part of the complex of climate justice. Does a tree have the right not to be felled? Does an animal have the right not to become extinct? Does a river have the right not to be straightened? These questions, as abstract as they may seem, are already enshrined in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia and could be good examples of how more justice can be practiced with animate and inanimate nature in Germany and Europe too.

It will also be a mammoth task for the new German government to get the delayed climate protection in German climate policy back on track, as Annelen Micus and Jakob Nehls describe in their article [4]. At the same time, this climate policy must always be measured against human rights. In the meantime, however, it may also be the responsibility of each individual to make climate-damaging actions increasingly unacceptable to society.