Short answers, pulled from the story.
Climate justice is a form of environmental justice focused on the unequal distribution of climate change burdens, particularly on marginalized and vulnerable populations. It examines how the people least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions often suffer the greatest consequences, and it seeks an equitable distribution of both the costs of climate change and the efforts to address it.
The triple injustice of climate change describes the situation where people who contributed the least to causing climate change are the most severely affected by it and are also negatively affected by the responses intended to address it. This concept captures the compounding disadvantages faced by low-income, indigenous, and marginalized communities.
The Bali Principles of Climate Justice were adopted at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg, also known as Rio+10. They framed climate justice as a social and human rights issue rather than a technical problem, emphasized the right to life and the importance of community in protecting environmental rights, and called on the oil industry and Global North nations to take responsibility for climate change.
According to a 2020 report by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute, the richest 1% of the global population produced twice as many carbon emissions as the poorest 50% during the 25 years from 1990 to 2015. A 2023 report found the richest 1% produce more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, and the top 10% account for more than half of global carbon emissions.
In 2022, floods affected more than 33 million people in Pakistan and submerged one-third of the country after monsoon rains reached over 190% of normal levels. Despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Pakistan bore catastrophic climate impacts while already managing an economic crisis, and the government lacked the resources to adequately reach affected communities.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted at the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, embedded key climate justice principles in Article 3.1. That article established "common but differentiated responsibilities," requiring all countries to act but placing greater obligations on developed nations given their greater historical contribution to emissions and their greater capacity to respond.