Jennie Stephens: An Urgent Call for Climate Justice
As humanity faces a worsening polycrisis of intersecting problems including climate chaos, violent militarization, and growing economic precarity while the billionaire class expands, people around the world are recognizing the need for systemic economic and political change to disrupt the institutions and structures that continue to concentrate wealth and power among the elite. As the devastation of the current extractive and exploitative systems get worse, a global climate justice movement is growing. Climate justice refers to a transformative approach to climate action that centers equity and justice for all. Climate justice goes beyond technological innovations – like electric vehicles and solar panels – and calls for a radical reimagining of economic systems and social structures and their transformation toward systems that focus on human well-being and ecological health.
After thirty years of dedicating my academic career to environmental science, energy technology innovation, and climate policy, I am now a staunch advocate for a paradigm shift to climate justice. I urge everyone who cares about the future of humanity to embrace a climate justice lens.
Why Focus on Climate Justice?
Climate justice focuses attention on the growing inequities and disproportionate impacts of climate change on low-income, marginalized communities, countries and regions, and prioritizes social, economic, and institutional innovations that advance societal transformation by centering social justice, racial justice, gender equality and economic equity. Climate justice acknowledges that climate change is not the problem – rather, climate destabilization is among the most devastating symptoms of socio-economic systems that are no longer serving humanity. Climate justice highlights the extremely uneven and inequitable impacts of climate change. It emphasizes the injustices caused by those who are contributing the most to worsening climate instability. They are among the least vulnerable and often act as powerful actors resisting change. On the other hand, the people, communities, households who are suffering the most from climate disruptions are contributing the least to these disruptions and are often already marginalized. A climate justice approach to climate action and climate policy goes beyond the mainstream, yet very narrow, technological emphasis on decarbonization and the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions without questioning the structures that produce them. Climate justice refers to advocacy for transformative climate action based on social change that prioritizes human dignity, economic justice, global solidarity, and an inclusive vision of a hopeful future for all.
My research reveals five key characteristics of climate justice.
1. Climate justice upholds human dignity and opposes dehumanization, war and coloniality
Climate justice is about safeguarding human rights and ensuring basic human dignity of the most vulnerable. Climate justice is also about opposing the dehumanization caused by war and colonial power. Climate justice acknowledges and resists global inequities among and within different countries and global regions; climate justice recognizes and tries to eradicate local disparities in climate impacts and vulnerabilities. Acknowledging the colonial legacy of the uneven distribution of climate suffering, climate justice resists continued economic extraction and exploitation and prioritizes a vision of an alternative economic system that prioritizes human well-being and planetary health.
2. Climate justice works to end the concentration of wealth and power
Instead of reinforcing socio-economic structures that concentrate wealth and power, climate justice prioritizes systemic changes that distribute wealth and power more equitably. Climate justice advocacy highlights that climate action that ignores justice perpetuates the continued concentration of wealth and power and exacerbates climate inequities. In response to growing inequities and the continuing concentration of wealth and power among elites, climate justice responds to the growing sense of dispossession, disconnection and disruption that most of humanity is experiencing. The global climate justice movement acknowledges that disruption of the systems that continue to concentrate wealth and power are essential. The climate justice movement is based on global solidarity and feminist principles. The global climate justice movement has been steadily expanding throughout the 2010s and 2020s.
3. A climate justice approach shifts attention toward wellbeing priorities and a sufficiency mindset
A climate justice approach involves a shift away from profit-seeking priorities and a wealth accumulation mindset toward well-being priorities and a sufficiency mindset. Rather than constantly striving for expansion, economic growth and the accumulation of wealth, a sufficiency mindset honors the abundance of resources all around us and focuses value on regenerative – rather than extractive – activities and structures. By acknowledging the ecological devastation and human suffering caused by profit-seeking imperatives and a wealth accumulation mindset, the global climate justice movement connects struggles for liberation, justice and peace with resistance to capitalism, extraction of fossil fuels and exploitation of people and communities. By focusing on human well-being and advocating for an economic system designed to prioritize well-being and support a sufficiency mindset, climate justice offers hope and inspiration to billions of people around the world. Within the climate justice movement, transformative proposals for new ways of structuring societies are gaining traction. Many climate justice activists are advocating for alternative economic systems including the solidarity economy, the wellbeing economy, the care economy, and the post-growth economy.
4. Climate justice requires contestation and disruption of the status quo
Climate justice is both an aspirational vision of a more equitable, stable, healthy future and a process of disruptive transformative change. The processes involved in advancing climate justice require contestation and disruption of the status quo. The disruptive qualities of climate justice are uncomfortable especially in mainstream institutions that reward complacency and compliance. Within academic literature, climate justice includes ideal conceptions and normative arguments of justice theory related to reparative justice, distribution justice, and procedural justice. The practice of climate justice requires institutions and activists to stand up for marginalized and vulnerable people and communities in new ways. Climate justice relies on resistance, protest, and other forms of advocacy to advance societal transformation.
5. Climate justice centers indigenous knowledge and feminist perspectives
Indigenous principles of reciprocity and regeneration are essential for climate justice, as are feminist perspectives of interrogating power structures. The interconnected destruction of human communities and ecological systems requires a commitment to acting on the relational knowledge about interconnectivity that is foundational to many indigenous knowledge systems. The disproportionate suffering from the impacts of climate change on indigenous communities further highlights the need for centering indigenous knowledge in climate justice efforts. Embracing a feminist lens is essential because climate justice requires recognition of problematic power structures that are resisting change and perpetuating the status quo. The dominance of patriarchal systems and processes must be continuously revealed to understand why efforts taken so far have been inadequate and insufficient. To prioritize a path forward to advance investments in climate justice both indigenous knowledge and feminist perspectives must be honored and integrated into climate policy and actions.
A feminist lens is essential for climate justice because patriarchal, colonial assumptions based on controlling the ecological world have proven to be destructive. The prevalence of climate isolationism, the common framing within patriarchal societies of climate change as an isolated, discrete, scientific problem in need of technological solutions, highlights the need for a climate justice approach that centers indigenous and feminist perspectives.
Climate Justice and the University: Can Higher Education Advance Transformative Change?
Climate justice is about radical, transformative change. As the term climate justice becomes more mainstream, it is important that organizations – including universities – do not co-opt the term and claim to be advancing climate justice performatively without a strong commitment to transformative social and economic change. As calls for climate justice grow louder in communities around the world, resistance to climate justice is also expanding. As powerful actors who do not want transformative change feel increasingly threatened by the prospect of structural and systemic change, efforts to delegitimize and dismiss climate justice advocacy are growing.
Many of us within universities are increasingly frustrated with the lack of attention within higher education to climate justice and transformative systemic change. Recent protests highlight how students are disappointed with ineffective and performative commitments by their universities toward a more stable, equitable and healthy future. The deep financial entanglements that students can see on campus – whether it be fossil fuel companies funding energy research centers or buildings named after weapons manufacturers – are deeply disturbing to many.
In my forthcoming book “Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future For All” I make the case that higher education is an underleveraged resource for advancing climate justice. I argue for a restructuring of higher education – making universities fully publicly funded so that they can maintain their public good mission and focus learning, research and engagement on transformative social change for the public good. Rather than reinforcing an educational system that is open to manipulation by powerful interests focused on further concentrating their wealth and power, universities have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to commit to climate justice. A climate justice university would endorse organizational transparency and full disclosure of all financial entanglements. A climate justice focus is essential for universities to ensure their intellectual integrity and to allow open exploration of structural systemic changes in the interest of the public good.
About the Author
Jennie C. Stephens is a feminist climate justice scholar-activist and energy democracy advocate. She was a 2023-2024 Radcliffe-Salata Climate Justice Fellow and is Ireland’s first Professor of Climate Justice at the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. She is the author of Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future for All (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) and Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy (Island Press, 2020). Her work focuses on reclaiming and restructuring higher education to better leverage its power for the transformative changes that are needed for a hopeful future. Her research also studies climate obstruction, fossil fuel phaseout, and financial innovations for climate justice. Before moving back to Ireland in 2024, she was on the faculty at Northeastern University, the University of Vermont and Clark University in the USA. She earned her PhD and MS at the California Institute of Technology and her BA at Harvard University.