The Case for Climate Reparations

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When asked what kinds of material support African climate, agri-food, and environmental organizations need to help remedy the challenges they seek to address, the vast majority responded that what they need is funding and other forms of capacity-building support. Meeting these needs is key to fostering just transitions in Africa. Yet rather than be considered a simple act of benevolence on the part of Global North countries, institutions, and organizations, such support must be seen in the context of the Global North’s creation and perpetuation of the extractive economies against which African organizations and civil societies struggle. It is for this reason that a pillar of the Just Transition framework—and indeed all just transition work—is the call for the just division, sharing, and distribution of the burdens of the climate crisis and responsibilities to deal with it (from green investment to refugee resettlement).34 And it is for this reason that climate reparations has become a call for substantial compensation to former colonized and marginalized developing countries as a necessary component of such work.

The establishment of a “Loss and Damage” fund was a highlight of the 2022 UN Climate Conference (COP27), the culmination of decades of pressure from climate-vulnerable nations, and the clearest pathway toward climate reparations in the years ahead. Integral to our collective ability to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis and address previous harms, the fund aims to provide financial assistance to such nations and address severe shortcomings in assistance thus far—assistance that the UN Environment Programme estimates is five to ten times below the $340 billion per year needed by 2030.35 Although a welcomed decision, this is but a first step in the struggle for climate reparations. Success depends on not just how quickly the fund gets off the ground. It will also depend on which state and non-state actors across the Global North are to be held accountable to such climate-vulnerable nations across the Global South, and how unconditional funding (rather than loans) and other support will be secured from them.

As the Just Transition framework and other frameworks for climate justice proliferate among major international organizations and institutions based in the Global North, there is the risk that these frameworks and the multiple principles, processes, and practices that foster just transitions will be stripped of their transformative power. It is thus imperative that as their collaboration with and support of African climate, agri-food, and environmental organizations continues and grows, Global North countries, organizations, and institutions persistently take seriously and uplift the multifaceted demands for reparations from them for their role in the crisis, and in service of just transitions globally.

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