The Global Climate Regime and Transitional Justice
Routledge Advances in Climate Change Research Series

Geopolitical changes combined with the increasing urgency of ambitious climate action have re-opened debates about justice and international climate policy. Mechanisms and insights from transitional justice have been used in over thirty countries across a range of conflicts at the interface of historical responsibility and imperatives for collective futures. However, lessons from transitional justice theory and practice have not been systematically explored in the climate context. The comparison gives rise to new ideas and strategies that help address climate change dilemmas.

This book examines the potential of transitional justice insights to inform global climate governance. It lays out core structural similarities between current global climate governance tensions and transitional justice contexts. It explores how transitional justice approaches and mechanisms could be productively applied in the climate change context. These include responsibility mechanisms such as amnesties, legal accountability measures, and truth commissions, as well as reparations and institutional reform. The book then steps beyond reformist transitional justice practice to consider more transformative approaches, and uses this to explore a wider set of possibilities for the climate context.

Each chapter presents one or more concrete proposals arrived at by using ideas from transitional justice and applying them to the justice tensions central to the global climate context. By combining these two fields the book provides a new framework through which to understand the challenges of addressing harms and strengthening collective climate action. This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of climate change and transitional justice.

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

List of Tables and Figures

Introduction: A Transitional Justice Approach to the Climate Change Context

Chapter One: From Climate Harms to Climate Action

Chapter Two: Classic Strategies for Managing Climate Justice Dilemmas

Chapter Three: Managing Responsibility – Amnesty, Legal Accountability, Truth Recovery

Chapter Four: Addressing Climate Harms – Strategies for Repair

Chapter Five: Institutional Reform for Future-Oriented Climate Action

Chapter Six: Transformative Approaches to Climate Justice

Conclusion: Building Solidarity across Divides

Sonja Klinsky is Assistant Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, USA.

Jasmina Brankovic is a Senior Researcher with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, South Africa.