Earth Equity News

Forward From Copenhagen: Recognizing Climate Change as a Justice Problem. By Tom Athanasiou, EarthIsland, Spring 2010 issue. "Almost two decades after I started working on climate change, I was happily astounded to witness the crystallization, on the streets of Copenhagen, of a grassroots movement that was both energetic and sophisticated, and to see global civil society groups working in solidarity with the leaders of the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations to press a collective agenda. And I can tell you something else: Our chances of preventing climate catastrophe rests in large part on the ability of this new alliance to communicate to the world's richest and most powerful peoples that the emissions emergency is, above all things, a crisis of justice.

"As everyone knows, the Copenhagen talks failed to catapult us into the ambitious global mobilization we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But this was never going to happen anyway... [But,] the emergence of a semi-organized bloc of 'Most Vulnerable Countries' (MVCs) is news that will stay news, and not just because of the tension between the MVCs and 'emerging economies' like China and India. The larger issue is that the MVCs have come to know themselves as frontline states, and in so doing have irrevocably transformed the global politics of climate crisis. It goes without saying that, in the coming battles, the most vulnerable will reserve much of their ire for the wealthy countries of the North... Copenhagen, for all its disappointments, marked a turn. The need for an emergency mobilization is obvious, and with it a set of challenges that can no longer be denied. These will get clearer in the years ahead, but the essential situation is before us: With the atmosphere's ability to absorb carbon critically limited, we face the greatest resource-sharing problem of all time. For all its complexity, the core of this problem can be stated simply enough: What kind of a climate transition would be fair enough to actually work? The climate problem is and remains a justice problem. It's more than this, of course, but justice is nonetheless the key. If we fail to solve it in time, it will be in large part because we refused to see it as such." Tom Athanasiou directs EcoEquity (ecoequity.org), an Earth Island Institute-sponsored project, and is a member of the Greenhouse Development Rights authors' group.