Source material and useful links

Statement on the human rights obligations related to climate change, with a particular focus on the right to life by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment

Climate Action Tracker individual country pledges for greenhouse gas emission reductions

Climate Justice Finance

Adaptation Gap Report 2020 from UN Environment Programme

Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change – from Carbon Brief

Why the climate crisis is a humanitarian emergency from UN Humanitarian

Climate Change and Displacement

UK Climate Change and Migration Coalition

Platform on Disaster Displacement

Climate Litigation

Client Earth

Scientists Can Now Blame Individual Natural Disasters on Climate Change – from Scientific American

(Un)Natural Disasters: Communicating Linkages Between Extreme Events and Climate Change – from World Meteorological Organization

Interview with James Thornton, head of public interest law firm Client Earth, explaining how the law can be harnessed for the good of people and the planet, from DW

more Climate Justice briefings (updated May 2021)
The Case for Climate Justice
Climate Justice in International Law
Climate Justice Finance
Climate Displacement
Climate Litigation
Source material and useful links

Recent news and opinion about Climate Justice

UN chief links windfall profits to climate loss and damage

21/9/2022: UN secretary general António Guterres has called on developed economies to tax the windfall profits of oil and gas companies, in part to support poorer countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis. Wealthy nations have remained conspicuously silent on how to finance extreme climate impacts.

Source: Climate Home News

Poorer countries demand global tax to pay for climate damage

19/9/2022: Low income countries have submitted proposals for a world global carbon tax for discussion at the UN General Assembly. Options for taxation include air and shipping transport and financial transactions. Richer countries have acknowledged the need for a framework for climate loss and damage.

Source: The Guardian

Pakistan floods highlight flaws in concept of climate adaptation

14/9/2022: The scale of devastation in Pakistan challenges the notion of “adaptation” as a core strategic response to climate change. Additional provision for “loss and damage” can help but the real urgency is to limit the degree of climate change.

Source: Inter Press Service

European leaders shun climate adaptation summit

6/9/2022: The Africa Adaptation Summit was recently held in Rotterdam in preparation for the COP27 climate negotiations. Presidents of Senegal, DRC and Ghana criticised the poor representation of richer countries responsible for unmet promises of climate finance for adaptation.

Source: Climate Home News

Fossil fuel subsidies almost doubled in 2021

29/8/2022: Major economies are struggling with longstanding pledges to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Support for fossil fuels in 51 countries worldwide almost doubled to $697 billion in 2021.

Source: OECD

‘Epic’ Pakistan floods show need for climate action

29/8/2022: Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change. It faces rates of warming considerably above the global average. Campaigners are calling on countries most historically responsible for climate change to support vulnerable countries’ adaptation efforts.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Heat renders parts of Africa ‘not suitable’ for life

31/8/2022: According to a senior European humanitarian official, parts of Somalia, northern Kenya and Ethiopia are becoming uninhabitable due to rising temperatures. Almost 3 million people in the Sahel region are surviving in pre-famine conditions.

Source: Devex

Rich countries fall $17bn short of 2020 climate finance goal

29/7/2022: Rich nations mobilised $83.3 billion of climate finance in 2020, a 4% increase on the previous year but short of their $100bn target. The bulk of the funding was in the form of loans rather than grants and went to Asian and middle income countries.

Source: Climate Home News

Are we inured to weather crises?

16/7/2022: We are so distracted by politics and crime that extreme climate events are passing us by with barely a whimper in the media. With each successive disaster in India, people lose their ability to cope and have no alternative but to migrate.

Source: Down to Earth

19/5/2022: Disasters continued to trigger most internal displacements globally, with 23.7 million recorded in 2021. Weather-related hazards accounted for 94 per cent of this total, many of which were evacuations in the face of cyclones and floods that struck densely populated areas of Asia and the Pacific region.

Source: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre

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