Mitigation justice

Abstract

Mitigating climate change and social injustice are critical, interwoven challenges. Climate change is driven by grossly unequal contributions to elevated greenhouse gas emissions among individuals, socioeconomic groups, and nations. Yet, its deleterious impacts disproportionately affect poor and less powerful nations, and the poor and the less powerful within each nation. This climate injustice prompts a call for mitigation strategies that buffer the poorest and the most vulnerable against climate change impacts. Unfortunately, all emissions mitigation strategies also reshape social, economic, political, and ecological processes in ways that may create climate change mitigation injustices—i.e., a unique set of injustices not caused by climate change, but by the strategies designed to stem it. Failing to stop climate change is not an answer—this will swamp all adverse impacts of even unjust mitigation in terms of the scope and scale of disastrous consequences. However, mitigation without justice will create uniquely negative consequences for the more vulnerable. The ensuing analysis systematically assesses how climate change mitigation strategies can generate or ameliorate injustices. We first examine how climate science and social justice interact within and among countries. We then ask what there is to learn from the available evidence on how emissions reductions, well-being, and equity have unfolded in a set of countries. Finally, we discuss the intersection between emissions reduction and mitigation justice through actions in important domains including energy, technology, transport, and food systems; nature-based solutions; and policy and governance.