Decolonizing the Atmosphere: The Climate Justice Movement on Climate Debt

• Date: 01 June 2018
• Author: Rikard Warlenius
• DOI: 10.1177/1070496517744593
• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Decolonizing the

Atmosphere: The Climate

Justice Movement on

Climate Debt

Rikard Warlenius

1

Abstract

A central concept raised by the climate justice movement is climate debt. Here, the

claims and warrants of the movement support for climate debt is identified through

an argumentation analysis of their central manifestos. It is found that the climate debt

claim is understood as primarily restorative, in the sense that the environmental

space of the developing countries must be returned, ‘‘decolonized.’’ The damage

caused by climate change also gives rise to a compensatory adaptation debt.

The result is compared with an earlier study on ecological debt. Both concepts are

framed within an unjust power relation between North and South, but there

are differences. Ecological debt is mainly analyzed in terms of an unjust economic

exploitation, which is congenial with its use as an argument for cancellation of

Southern external debts; climate debt is rather seen as a violation of communal

rights and territories, an argument for climate justice.

Keywords

environmental justice, climate justice movements, ecological debt, climate debt,

sustainable development

Since about 2005, the climate change debate in and around the negotiations of

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

has been increasingly politicized. Through the formation of the climate justice

movement (CJM), the scope of the discourse has widened from mainly

technomanagerial concerns over the Kyoto mechanisms to an array of social,

economic, and environmental justice issues, ranging from economic distribution,

Journal of Environment &

Development

2018, Vol. 27(2) 131–155

!The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1070496517744593

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1

Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Rikard Warlenius, Human Ecology Division, Lund University, So

¨lvegatan 10, 22362 Lund, Sweden.

Email: rikard.warlenius@hek.lu.se

ethnic rights, and gender equality to critical views on development and

global trade policies (Bedall & Go

¨rg, 2014; Ciplet, Roberts, & Kahn, 2015,

pp. 169–170).

One inf‌luential def‌inition of climate justice, used in, for example, Bond’s

(2014) overview, is made by Anne Petermann (2009): ‘‘Climate justice is the

recognition that the historical responsibility for the vast majority of greenhouse

gas emissions lies with the industrialized countries of the global north’’ (pp. 135–

136), whereas peasants, indigenous peoples, women, and so on has been dispro-

portionaly af‌fected. ‘‘These are also the people least responsible for climate

change’’ (Bond, 2014, pp. 135–136).

Thus, climate debt—basically the idea that climate change is caused by rich

people while mainly harming people that are poor, and therefore, the former

should take the burden of mitigation and adaptation costs—is at the very core of

climate justice.

Climate debt stems from the ecological debt concept, the history of which has

already been outlined (see Martı

´nez-Alier, 2002; Paredis, Goeminne, Vanhove,

Maes, & Lambrecht, 2008; Roberts & Parks, 2007; Simms, 2009; Warlenius,

Pierce, & Ramasar, 2015). The tandem notions of ecological and climate debt

seem to function as beacons in critical discourses of climate and environmental

change, judging from their status in recent publications by Naomi Klein (2014)

and Pope Francis (2015).

This study has two overarching aims: First, there is a growing social science

literature on CJM (see Primary Sources section), but despite the central role that

climate debt has played for the movement, it is not the focus of any of these

studies. By applying argumentation analysis to central CJM manifestos, I intend

to identify and analyze their claims as well as the thoughts that underpin them.

Thereby, our understanding of this pivotal movement is likely to be enhanced,

and future elaborations by academics on the normative, legal, political, or quan-

titative aspects of climate debt can be based on a f‌irmer knowledge of how the

CJM conceives it. Second, there is a historical link between the environmental

justice movement and the CJM (Dawson, 2010; Harlan et al., 2015; Schlosberg

& Collins, 2014). The development from the former to the latter also brought

about a shift in focus from ecological debt to climate debt. Our understanding of

this historical development can be enhanced by comparing the results from

this study with those of James Rice’s (2009) analysis of the nongovernmental

organization (NGO) argument on ecological debt.

To enable a comparison with Rice’s results and add the data in his article

to the data in this article, a similar method is applied, for example, a version

of Toulmin’s argumentation analysis. Thereby, the conceptual development

from ecological debt to climate debt can be captured, and the leverage of the

study is enhanced. The other reason why argumentation analysis is used is

that it helps provide a profound and clear understanding of the claims in the

analyzed sources.

132 Journal of Environment & Development 27(2)