Climate justice means holding accountable the countries, corporations, and people fueling our climate crisis and demanding they support those experiencing its harshest effects.
What is climate justice?
The climate crisis is affecting every country on every continent. But it doesn’t affect everyone equally — nor is everyone equally responsible. For example, a farmer in Bangladesh emits few greenhouse gases, yet must cope with the extreme weather that devastates her land and livestock year after year.
Climate justice means recognizing that those who contribute least to carbon emissions are paying the highest cost. It also means holding responsible the countries, corporations, and people driving our climate crisis. Marginalized communities and organizations serving them in the U.S. and around the world are leading efforts to protect themselves against the escalating impacts of climate change. We must support them.
What is climate injustice?
Climate injustice means the world’s poorest countries and communities are paying the price of a climate crisis they are least responsible for. The richest people, corporations, and countries driving climate change aren’t experiencing the impacts of extreme weather anywhere near the levels faced by people living in marginalized and climate-vulnerable communities.
In 2019, the richest among us were responsible for more carbon emissions than 5 billion people—the equivalent of 66 percent of humanity, according to Oxfam’s research. To be more specific, it is wealthy polluters—rich industrialized countries and in particular carbon billionaires—that are driving staggering levels of emissions.
These polluters have a responsibility to cut their emissions and pay for the costs of reducing emissions (such as the transition to renewable energy), supporting the practical and financial needs of those experiencing its harshest impacts.
Causes of climate injustice
The causes of climate injustice are the unchecked, polluting actions of rich countries, corporations, and individuals.
- Wealthy countries
Rich countries are responsible for 37 percent of current global emissions, despite being home to only 15 percent of the global population. To compare, Africa is home to 17 percent of the world’s population yet emits less than 4 percent of the global total.
- Big Oil
Since 1988, just 100 fossil fuel producers—such as ExxonMobile, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips—have produced 71 percent of global emissions.
- Carbon billionaires
The yachts, private jets, and lavish lifestyles of super-rich individuals combined with their investments in heavily polluting industries make them super-contributors to climate change. Oxfam estimates just four years of investment emissions (from 2021-2025) of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires are enough to cause around 34,000 excess deaths between 2026 and 2126.
Wealthy nations, corporations, and people have more resources to cope with climate change. Richer countries have the public infrastructure to weather droughts, hurricanes, and flooding, and the financial means to recover from them.
People living in low-income communities in the U.S. and around the world have less protection and lack the financial resources to respond to and recover from disasters. This means they experience greater loss, which accumulates over time.
Who is impacted by climate injustice?
The people most impacted by climate injustice live in lower-income, impoverished communities and countries. Warmer countries in the Global South that rely on agriculture for income are especially susceptible, as are small island states.
Regardless of geography, women, people of color, Indigenous Peoples, and other marginalized groups suffer the harshest impacts. In most of these places, women represent nearly half the agricultural workforce but are often excluded from training and resources that could help them adapt to climate change.
These three examples illustrate the challenges people in lower-income countries face and how Oxfam collaboration with local organizations supports efforts to alleviate the negative effects of climate change:
Cambodia
Droughts, flooding, hotter temperatures, and erratic weather in the Lower Mekong River region of Cambodia has made it difficult for farmers to plant and harvest enough food for their families and to sell for income. But a project between Oxfam and a local organization called Northeastern Rural Development is helping them develop new ways to grow food by marrying aquaculture with hydroponics.
Farmers like Sare raise fish in tanks while growing vegetables suspended in tubes of water. “When I use the aquaponic system, I feel that it is easier than growing directly on the ground,” said Sare. “The difficulty was that I must spray pesticides on worms and small insects, but with aquaponics, you don’t need to. It’s easy.”
Chad
People in Chad depend heavily on agriculture and livestock, yet the country is also vulnerable to recurring drought and flooding. They are also enduring more than a decade of conflict, which has lowered production of cereal. In some areas, these factors have combined to cause acute malnutrition in nearly 11 percent of the population.
In 2022, Oxfam supported a project run by the Association d’Appui aux Initiatives de Développement Rural that reached 100,000 people, providing them with small animals, business training, and the organization of saving-and-loan groups.
One young woman reported that receiving three goats from the project helped her improve her family’s nutrition. “Even if I don’t have food at home, my children can drink the milk produced by my goats. I worry less about them now.”
Mali
Only a small proportion of the land in Mali is suitable for growing crops, making the country vulnerable to even minor changes in rainfall and increases in temperature. Since 2022, Oxfam has supported an initiative run by the Baraoueli Pastoral Women's Association called “Improving Women's Food Security, Livelihoods and Resilience.” The project is helping women in three regions, including Satou Coulibaly, a woman farmer living with a disability who has been struggling to grow groundnuts and millet in the changing climate. "It's getting harder and harder to get enough to eat,” she says. The project is designed to help farmers switch to more drought-resistant varieties of rice and soybeans.
Why does climate justice matter?
Climate justice matters because everyone has a right to live in a safe and healthy environment—not just today but generations from now.
Recent years have been the warmest on record. Entire ecosystems have collapsed, and people are dying. Climate-fueled disasters have increased poverty, hunger, and inequality for millions of people—many of them in lower-income countries. Long-standing gender, racial, and economic inequalities mean that historically marginalized communities are the most affected by the climate crisis.
It is fundamentally wrong that these communities are suffering because of the actions of wealthier countries, corporations, and people.
What can be done to overcome climate injustice?
Rich, high-polluting countries, corporations, and individuals must cut their emissions and compensate for the damage they’re causing by, among other factors, paying more taxes. They must also support organizations in the U.S. and around the world facing the most serious climate vulnerabilities with technical, legal, and financial assistance in their recovery and adaptation to climate change.
Cut emissions
Wealthy, high-emitting countries must take responsibility for their role in driving carbon emissions and drastically reduce them. They also must stop issuing any new licenses or permitting the expansion of coal, oil, and gas exploration, extraction, or processing, and instead transition to clean and renewable energy sources. Carbon billionaires must reduce their overconsumption and investments in polluting corporations.
We must also support communities in the U.S. and around the world who live near fossil fuel and mineral extraction sites, as they bear the negative social and health impacts of regular exposure to toxic elements and the loss of their land.
Tax the rich
Increased taxation could bring a significant amount of money back into public hands. For example, these three taxes could raise more than $9 trillion, which could support countries in the Global South:
- A wealth tax on the world’s millionaires and billionaires could generate over $1.7 trillion per year.
- An income tax of 60 percent on the top 1 percent of earners would generate $6.4 trillion per year.
- A tax of 50 to 90 percent on windfall profits of 722 mega-corporations could generate up to $941 billion.
Support climate finance
Governments, businesses, and international organizations must financially address the loss and damage experienced by people in the countries most severely affected by climate change by doubling down on their climate finance commitments.
At the COP15 meeting in 2009, developed countries committed to increasing finance to support climate action in developing countries to $100 billion annually by 2020. In 2020, they provided $83.3 billion, but this was primarily provided in loans rather than grants, trapping impoverished countries in a never-ending cycle of debt to deal with a problem created by others. Oxfam’s analysis of the funding provided shows that it was worth at most $24.5 billion.
Rich countries must fulfill this pledge and direct funding to communities and organizations in affected areas that need resources to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Help us to end climate injustice
Oxfam advocates for action to protect the human rights and livelihoods of people most affected by the climate crisis. We fight for wealthy nations like the United States to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, to help frontline communities and organizations with the fewest resources lead their recovery from catastrophic climate impacts, and to provide funding for climate action in lower-income countries.