From environmental to climate justice: climate change and the discourse of environmental justice

TLDR

Environmental justice has shaped climate justice, with grassroots movements emphasizing local impacts, inequitable vulnerabilities, community voice, and sovereignty, contrasting with elite NGO‑centric discussions. The review aims to trace the development of environmental‑justice discourse, from its origins to contemporary ideas for just climate adaptation. It does so by mapping the principles and demands of grassroots climate‑justice movements and their evolution into recent adaptation concepts. The article is categorized under Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice, Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Social Movements.

Abstract

Abstract Environmental justice is a major movement and organizing discourse in the environmental politics arena, and both the movement and the idea have had a large influence on the way that climate justice has been conceptualized. While most discussions of climate justice in the academic literature focus on ideal conceptions and normative arguments of justice theory, or on the pragmatic policy of the more elite environmental nongovernmental organizations ( NGOs ), a distinct discourse has developed out of the grassroots. In these movement articulations of climate justice, the concerns and principles of environmental justice are clear and consistent. Here, climate justice focuses on local impacts and experience, inequitable vulnerabilities, the importance of community voice, and demands for community sovereignty and functioning. This review traces the discourse of environmental justice from its development, through the range of principles and demands of grassroots climate justice movements, to more recent articulations of ideas for just adaptation to climate change. This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Social Movements