[This is an excerpt from an article in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.]
… [W]hereas the [developed countries], in the justification they offer of their policies, show themselves to be primarily concerned with order, the states of the [developing] world are primarily concerned with the achievement of justice in the world community …Headley Bull (Bull, Citation1977)
Climate justice has gradually but unquestionably emerged as one of the main themes of climate change. Within and across the Commonwealth, and externally as well, calls for climate justice are growing and with that the ‘evidence accumulates of the growing social and environmental injustices aggravated or driven by climate change … even as the landscape within which [this] is situated is rapidly changing … ’ (Newell et al., Citation2021). On one hand, the effect of the still ‘emerging geographies of climate justice’ is that, as Susannah Fisher argues, the matter ‘has been scaled as an international justice issue … [thereby] narrow[ing] the space for alternative articulations and claims for climate justice’ (Fisher, Citation2015). On the other hand, it is increasingly evident that it is poor people and communities that are the most vulnerable to (the adverse impacts) of climate change and climate justice issues become national and local issues as well. Thus, when low-income households and vulnerable communities in India, Kenya, Pakistan, and South Pacific islands states are affected by severe droughts, flooding, and more frequent and stronger typhoons, as has been the case in recent times, the ensuing discourses have invariably focused on, at times mutually reinforcing, narratives of inequitable social impacts and the responsibilities and fairness of institutions, as well as policy and practical responses. Doing so, however, and then framing ensuing discussions over how to respond to climate justice issues in terms of climate justice being a climate finance issue (that is, about the global distribution of wealth and who should be responsible for paying for mitigation and adaptation costs in the less developed countries and regions), arguably fulfils Bull’s contention concerning order versus justice in world politics.
The main theme of this special issue is increasingly pertinent as developing countries are progressively looking at climate change from the perspective of climate justice. Meanwhile, by transforming their economies and pursuing energy policies that respond to geo-political shifts as well as other global initiatives aimed at reducing carbon emissions – for example from agricultural practices, energy sources, and land management, all of which together contribute significantly to anthropogenic climate change, developed countries are irrefutably reconciling their views of economic development with the climate agenda. In doing so, they are arguably seeking to maintain their developed and, in a couple of cases, ‘great power’ status, and hence by extension the existing global order. Currently, as Bernstein (Citation2019) contends, ‘the norms or institutions that demand … responsibility are notably absent’ in global environmental concerns, unlike the areas of ‘peace and security, global economic management, and human rights’. Bernstein believes that ‘a lack of congruence between systemic and environmental great powers [and] weak empirical links between action on the environment and maintenance the of international order [… that] arose out of North–South conflict’ contribute to this absence. Climate change therefore is another area where global governance arrangements can and are reinforcing the international order. Understood from this perspective, the increasing tendency of developing countries to frame climate justice as a climate finance issue while developed countries, especially the great powers, compete over setting the global governance agenda for climate change has become more apparent. This will likely produce a global governance regime that maintains and perpetuates the current international system.
A “just” transition to green energy: The new Commonwealth challenge
Climate change, small states, inequality and development
Building more common wealth in a climate changed world
The approach towards climate justice within and across the Commonwealth tends to reflect this dichotomy. While the developed member states of the bloc (i.e., Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), and New Zealand) clamber to stamp their leadership over global responses to climate change, the less developed member states, especially the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and other member states very vulnerable to climate change, agitate for the former, as do other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states, to finance their climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives. To be sure, all four developed Commonwealth member states are currently ‘realigning their climate strategies with the [still] emerging geopolitical paradigms to achieve geopolitical resilience’ (Deloitte, 2022), and support policies for clean energy transitions and decarbonisation that will undoubtedly preserve their standing in the global economic order even as the green transition transforms that order, and even as the Global South’s access to capital and climate financing is growing, thereby deepening the North–South divide. Thus, for example, the UK continues to support fossil fuel exploration even as it races to achieve a net zero policy and strategy, and since 2015 ‘fossil fuels have received £20 billion more than renewables’ (The Guardian, Horton, Citation2023).
At the same time, Commonwealth developing countries, especially the SIDS, many of which are suffering from enduring legacies of colonialism, are not only increasingly at the forefront of the adverse effects of more frequent and severe weather events but find that they are unable to re-align their economies, at least efficiently, both structurally and through policies in ways that would allow them to achieve sustainable climate strategies, such as for example by increasing their uptake of renewables and shifting to green energy sources. To make the case and point, the Republic of Kenya, a Commonwealth developing country that is considered ‘highly vulnerable to climate change’ because of the patterns of forced labour and migration, agricultural production, and inequality induced by British colonialism in that country (Ndege, Citation2009), estimates that it will now need around US$62 billion (Nzau, Citation2014) to implement its mitigation and adaptation initiatives by 2030 (Republic of Kenya, Citation2022). However, a report by the Climate Policy Initiative in 2021 found that Kenya not only received just ‘one-third of the climate-related investments it needed annually’ but that this financing ‘[targeted] certain sectors and activities that will only partially address climate issues and significant efforts will be needed to align all sectors relevant to achieving Kenya’s NDCs …’ (Newell et al., Citation2021).
Given the climate resilience deficits of Commonwealth developing countries, and considering the impacts of their respective colonial legacies in terms of their current climate vulnerabilities, it is not surprising that much of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s work around climate change seems to reflect a consciousness with a need for climate justice financing. Thus, the Secretariat is focused on building the capacity of its developing country and SIDS members for accessing climate financing to address the vulnerabilities they face, and provides technical support for this through its Climate Finance Hub initiative; supporting innovation in climate health; addressing climate agriculture challenges; and funding young people to undertake climate initiatives among other things. Following a double cyclone hit to the Pacific island of Vanuatu in 2023, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth visited the island state to discuss ‘climate action and climate justice’. More recently, the ‘advocacy’ led by the Commonwealth Secretary-General on behalf of the Commonwealth’s 33 small states at the recent International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4) was aimed at ‘amplifying their need for accessing climate finance and addressing the climate crisis’. This is further testament to the Secretariat’s commitment and continued leadership on addressing not only the vulnerabilities of member states, but also climate justice issues that derive from those vulnerabilities.
In similar vein, the Commonwealth Foundation, in prioritising climate justice as a strategic area, exhibits this cognitive orientation. Thus, the Foundation has focused on bringing sustained attention to the matter of climate justice in the Commonwealth, for example through its Critical Conversations initiative, which has featured high-level discussions on climate reparations, securing accountability for climate justice through international law, and ensuring that ‘a transition to clean energy be achieved without imposing fresh burdens on the world’s poorest’ (Commonwealth Secretariat, Citation2022), but also through featuring climate justice as a main theme in its People’s Forum events convened on the margins of the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meetings. Even the Ramphal Institute, a small policy research institute and Commonwealth organisation, with its more recent forays into climate justice, reflects this reasoning by focusing on disseminating the climate justice experiences of Commonwealth people and communities.
David Gomez is the Director of the Ramphal Institute.
