Climate justice: identity, history and power

Part II of The Regenerative Activism Series. Participants: Gita Parihar, Hiba Ahmad (Our Future Now), Nick Dearden (Global Justice Now), Sheila Menon (Ulex Project & Plane Stupid), Rachel Kennerley (Friends of the Earth).

The climate crisis is as much about power and politics as it is about the environment. This session explores the challenges involved in ensuring climate justice and designing a just transition beyond our carbon-belching system for all communities and workers. How can we achieve the changes required in a way that promotes justice and equality by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing the historic oppression of frontline and vulnerable communities and countries? How can we ensure that the structural transformation required doesn’t strengthen the hand of those who already use their power to exploit and oppress? Understanding the power dynamics of race, class, gender and our economic and political systems – both locally and globally – are crucial to building a climate justice movement. It involves reconstructing our identities, building renewed understanding of our histories, and re-forging our socio-political relationships.