Climate justice

Climate justice is a principle that grants every person in the world, including future generation, an equal right for an intact world climate while at the same time aiming at fair funding of measures that have become necessary because of climate change.

To avoid the world climate to be out of joint, global warming would need to be limited to less than two degrees Celsius. This entails that no person in the world must utilize more than two tonnes of CO2 per year. Currently, Europeans emit an average of 10 tonnes, US citizens more than 20 tonnes of CO2 every year, in contrast to people in countries of the global South who often emit less than one tonne of CO2 a year. At the same time, countries of the global South are hit hardest by climate change: especially in arid landscapes such as many regions in Africa, precipitations decrease more drastically still, deserts and steppes expand, agricultural yields decline, and crop failures and food shortages become more frequent. Coastal regions are often affected by erosion of soil and sea-level rise.

Climate justice is an issue of distribution of risks and opportunities. Industrial and threshold countries, the heaviest polluters, need to make the most significant contribution to climate protection!