Day 1: Day one: Reading (What is Climate Justice?)

When the seriousness of environmental issues are mentioned by textbooks and some environmental initiatives, to be honest, I didn’t know what I could do to make a difference. It wasn’t until I was given the opportunity to get away from the city and get close to the endless grasslands, feel the surge of the ocean and quietly enjoy the brilliant starry sky for the first time. I was so amazed by nature that I wanted to read more research on the causes and solutions to environmental issues, and to start doing something about it to avoid acting in an environmentally unfriendly way.

From today’s reading, I learned that, the solutions to the climate crisis are not just a scientific matter, but a political one too; that our discussions about the climate have to include more than just data and statistics on degrees of warming and atmospheric carbon concentration, but also concepts such as power, access to resources, and justice.

The egregious injustice of the climate crisis has important implications for our efforts to agree on international solutions. As “The equivalent of rich countries eating every slice of pizza but one and then arguing everyone pick up an equal share of the cheque because they ate part of one slice.” in the words of War on Want’s Asad Rehman.

To achieve climate justice, rich nations are exepected to acknowledge their historical culpability for creating this crisis and take steps to make amends – for example by supporting developing countries to transition to clean energy and adapt to our changing climate (Global Witness, 2021).